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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Ceija Stojka: This Has Happened

Nov 22, 2019 – Mar 23, 2020
Calle de Santa Isabel, 52, 28012 Madrid, Spain

The art of Ceija Stojka can look like it was painted in a rush, as if she had to catch the image before it disappeared from history. Stojka, who lived from 1933 to 2013, was Austrian-Romani (a minority often referred to as Gypsies), and the survivor of three Nazi death camps. She was a child during that horror, and her pastoral settings, invaded by German SS in black uniforms strapped with brown leather—swastikas and barbed wire spider-walking into the scene—have a shocked immediacy and color. Her vision is unblinking. More than 100 works are on view. —L.J.

Ceija Stojka, Untitled, 2006. Courtesy of Galerie Kai Dikhas, Berlin.