Post #428378 by Cammo on Mon, Jan 12, 2009 10:39 AM

Glad Babs moved this over to Beyond Tiki, cause if ever there was a subject that was perfect for this forum....

Eva Zeisel was the leader of the 30s and 40s organic movement that created what we think of as Bohemian and Beatnik cool-cat abstraction.

A short bio;

Her mother first woman ever to graduate from the University of Budapest.

Born to a wealthy Hungarian Jewish family, her uncles were famous chemists and economists.

Eva was the first woman to learn the craft of pottery in the Budapest Guild.

In 1935 Zeisel was named the artistic director of the entire Soviet ceramics industry.

1936, thrown in solitary confinement for a year (!) in the USSR.

1938 - married in Austria, then fled from the Nazis.

Her experiences were the basis of the anti-Stalinist novel "Darkness at Noon".

In the 1930s and 40s, she lived and designed in New York.

Taught one of the first Industrial Design courses at Pratt Institute.

Had the first one-woman show at the New York Museum of Modern Art.

And she's still alive & making stuff!!!!!