Marta Jakobovits
Look and See
21st October – 30th November 2022
Elizabeth Xi Bauer announces Look and See an exhibition of works by Marta Jakobovits. The artist’s oeuvre is a complex, researched and developed exploration of ceramic techniques. From casting to modeling and firing, using traditional materials and methods, the artist experiments with limitations of processes.
Jakobovits is an artist with double citizenship, born in Hungary, she currently lives in Romania and exhibits her work all over the world.
The artist explains:
“The instinctive, sensory way of touching and feeling clay connects me strongly to the primal messages of the material.
Ceramics is such a special means of approaching the deep secrets of our existence, for me, ceramics is a special language. Through this special language of clay, I try to understand myself as a human being and my relationship with nature. There is an ongoing intention to place the resulting shapes and families of shapes in a personal context with natural objects and materials or even directly in natural environment. There is a constant dialogue with the nature around me.
I am driven by a strong curiosity – I carry out endless research on materials and glazes, using different techniques, processing possibilities and allowing the results to generate new forms, new ideas.”
– Marta Jakobovits.
From the beginning of her professional activity until now, Jakobovits has participated in numerous symposiums, artist residencies and seminars in different countries. Almost yearly, since 1999, Jakobovits has spent a month in residence at the Kecskemét International Ceramic Studio, in Hungary. In 2018 she also undertook a renowned residency in Iran, having been invited by Mahmud Maktabi, director of Rah Art Residencies, to hold workshops, artist talks in Tehran and Isfahan. This allowed Jakobovits to have direct contact with ancient and contemporary Persian arts.
Parallel to her new works, Jakobovits further developed her research into the inner secrets of the cuneiform ceramic tablets which she studied at the Vatican Museum. These once belonged to the famous Ashurbanipal library, named after the last great king of the Assyrian Empire. Of note, cuneiform, a type of writing used in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) is understood by many to be the oldest writing system created by mankind, even predating Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Jakobovits’ choice of glaze test plates arrangement, My Library pays homage to Ashurbanipal’s library. This series of works explores the spectacular changes that occur in her personal glazes as a result of the various firing processes and combination of materials the artist uses.
Jakobovits’ glaze-test library was exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, as part of Marta Jakobovits: Part of the Road Traveled (December 9, 2021 – April 24, 2022). This retrospective, curated by art critic Mălina Ionescu, presented the main stages of her career and practice, from early works such as her terracotta series of the 1960s and 1970s, to pieces and installations created in 2022.
The Artist’s Studio exhibition (April 30 – September 12, 2022), curated by Sorina Jecza, at the Cultural Center of the Baroque Palace of the Roman Catholic Bishop in Oradea, Romania, featured a larger installation by Marta Jakobovits. This installation consists of glazed tiles created in 2022 that demonstrate fifteen personal glaze processes. The piece also features several objects covered with blue and turquoise glazes obtained through this glaze process.
In 2021, Jakobovits completed an installation titled Collecting the Raindrops which features shapes created to collect raindrops. The entire rearrangeable installation is an empathetic response to climate change through its visual impact on the viewer’s emotions.
A poetic approach is also manifested in the ceramic ensemble My Stones (2022). Covered with special purple and blue glazes, this piece manifests the strong life force of the forms created in relation to natural forms or even the natural environment.
Jakobovits’ work was exhibited at the Transylvanian Art Center in Sepsiszentgyörgy, St. George, Romania (May 21 –June 18, 2021) in a solo show curated by renowned sculptor Peter Madaras. The artworks selected for this exhibition highlighted important periods of the artist’s practice through installations. Madaras chose to focus on Jakobovits’ special relationship with nature. The exhibition was opened by art critic Dr Irene Kanyadi, who wrote the foreword in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.
In 2021, the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, acquired and exhibited Jakobovits’ installation Memory of the Place (2014).
Jakobovits was selected to participate in Common Space, the National Salon of Applied Arts and Design 2022 (April 9 – September 4, 2022) in the Kunsthalle, Budapest. She also was invited to participate at the 2022 edition of Art-Effect National Biennale of Decorative Arts, Criș-County Museum, Oradea.
The Criș County Museum in Oradea is participating in a large European cross-border project that will be completed in the autumn of 2022. For this, the museum has requested that Jakobovits places her compositions in a three-story glass case for their permanent exhibition.
On the occasion of the Cluj International Ceramics Biennale 2019 at the Art Museum Cluj, Romania, Marta Jakobovits was commissioned by the organisers to create a personal exhibition in the context of the biennale.
Notes to Editors
Marta Jakobovits (born 1944, Satu Mare county, Romania) lives and works in Oradea, Romania.
Jakobovits’ career as a ceramic artist began in the 70s, after graduating from the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj. In 2006, the University of Arts and Design in Budapest gave her the title of Doctor of Liberal Arts. Amongst many other awards and recognitions, in 2013 Jakobovits was presented by the President of the Republic of Hungary the Hungarian Knight’s Cross of Merit. In 2010 she was presented the Diploma of Excellence of the Romanian Ministry of Culture and in 2007 she obtained The Fire Arts Award of the Union of Artists from Romania the highest professional recognition Romania awards.
Jakobovits’ work has been exhibited extensively in Romania and Hungary and the artist has had solo exhibitions in Italy, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands. She has exhibited in international group exhibitions in Hungary, Italy, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Croatia, England, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Canada, U.S.A. and Japan.
Having lived under one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in history, the Romanian Nicolae Ceaușescu (‘The King of Communism’), the Jakobovits family, whose heritage is a mix of Armenian and Hungarian, lived on the border between Hungary and Romania, in the town of Oradea. A sense of displacement and adapting to new surroundings was an early influence on Jakobovits’ practice. At the time of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime Marta’s practice became a form of release from the oppressive forces around her. Along with her late husband, the renowned painter Miklós Jakobovits, Marta became part of the inner circle of the important Transylvanian artists who were vigilantly creating art as an act of resistance against the dictator and a regime which did not allow for such freedoms.
Marta Jakobovits’ artworks are held globally in private and public collections such as the National Museum of Contemporary Arts Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania; Public Art Collection Covasna, Covasna, Romania; Museum of the Cris County; Oradea, Romania; Art Museum Cluj, Cluj, Romania; Contemporary Art Collection of the Peter Jecza Foundation, Timisoara, Romania; Collection of the International Ceramic Studio Kecskemet in Hungary; Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, Budapest, Hungary; Contemporary Hungarian Gallery, Dunajska Streda, Slovakia; Continental Art Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Contemporary Art Collection of Rah Art Residency, Tehran, Iran; and the Contemporary Art Collection of the Romanian Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy.
Marta Jakobovits: Look and See runs from 21st October – 30th November 2022, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 20th October 2022, 6 – 8 pm in the presence of the artist. Marta Jakobovits will be available for interviews.
