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Czech Republic
Eastern Europe
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Anna Zemánková
1908-1986
Drawings (pencil, pen, marker, etc.)
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Information:
"Anna Zemankova was born in 1908 in Olomouc, Moravia. Her childhood and schooling were unexceptional. An early interest in drawing was discouraged by her father, a hairdresser. From 1926 she worked as a dental technician, then in 1933 she married a civil servant and lived in Brno. She had two sons and later a daughter; later the family moved to Prague in 1948."
"During the 1950s she suffered long periods of depresson. At the age of fifty-two she began to draw and found in this a way of overcoming her unhappy state. Anna Zemankova was diabetic. In 1966 she feared she would lose her eyesight, but in fact she became immobilized by paralysis and had to have both legs amputated."
"Like Madge Gill and other mediumistic artists, Anna Zemankova began to draw at the instigation of what she felt were creator spirits. She worked in a state of exaltation, in which she felt freed from constraints of everyday life. These states usually happened around dawn, between four and seven o'clock; she felt then that she was in touch with magnetic forces which normally elude representation. "Early in the morning," she said "I am freed from all cares. There is no need for second thoughts or an eraser, the drawing works itself out delightfully. Everything goes on its own." She said that she knew nothing of how the picture she was working on was going to turn out, except that the motif would reveal itself in the course of execution."
"Anna Zemankova believed in the kinship between man and plants, both links in the same vital chain. In her drawings she accomplished a ritual designed to reestablish the continuity of beings and things with the dynamism of the universe. She drew with hand raised, cultivating a harmonious gesture as if she were conducting a symphony. Indeed, music plays an important part in the creation of her compositions; sometimes when a preconceived idea does suggest itself to her she signals this by writing on the drawing, for example, "Rubinstein Sonata" or "Song Of The Blackbird."
"From 1969 she started to use more original techniques, first of all perforating the paper, then from 1971, crimping the drawings using hand-made rag paper. In 1973 she began to paint on silk or satin embroidered with pearls and spangles, or to create reliefs by cutouts and collages. 1
Additional info and images may be found at Raw Vision Magazine and abcd-art brut (under Collection > Artists).
Considered one of "50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002"
"Outsider Art: from the Outsider Archive, London (ArT RANDOM, No 50)" by Monika Kinley, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Ichiro Miyagawa.
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Bibliography:
Museum, etc.
ABCD Collection, Paris
Anthony Petullo Collection, Milwaukee, WI
Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Olomouc Museum of Art, Czech Republic
De Stadshof Collection, Ghent, Belgium
Reference
"L'Art Brut", fascicule No 14, 1986
"Artists of Pure Heart", exhibit catalog, 2001
"Oinincké vize Anny Zemánkové", exhibit catalog, 1998
"Raw Vision", No 14, 1996
"Outsider Art: from the Outsider Archive, London (ArT RANDOM, No 50)" by Monika Kinley, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Ichiro Miyagawa. Out of print
"50 Classic Outsiders", Raw Vision Sourcebook, 2002"
"Vernacular Visionaries: International Outsider Art" by Annie Carlano, Caterina Gemma Brenzoni, and Susan Brown McGreevy, Yale University Press, 2003. |
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