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KUAN YIN diosa de la misericordia © Susy Dembo
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"And,
somehow, when you return to where you were born, there’s something, a smell, a
sense, even if it was as bad as the Holocaust, that makes you feel that you
belong to that place. I remembered the good and the bad things, but I liked the
city. "S.D.
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| Susy Dembo, girl, in the ship Orbita, 1939: "Finally safe from the war" she wrote. |
Susy
Dembo, a Venezuelan artist born in Vienna, is part of that small constellation
of stars within plastic arts that has transcended the borders of Venezuela,
receiving awards such as the International Award for the Art of Incision in
Biella, Italy.
Her
second individual exhibition took place in Madrid in 1966 and since that
moment, her art hasn’t stopped circling the world: exhibitions in Paris, New
York, Washington, Berlín, Vienna, Rome, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Puerto Rico, Río de
Janeiro, Bogotá, Cali, Poland, England, Yugoslavia, Switzerland ... and of
course Venezuela.
Proudly
representing her adoptive country, she participated in biennials and
exhibitions in Switzerland, England, Germany, France, Poland, Colombia, Puerto Rico.
Susy Dembo, the multifaceted artist, never rests. In 2004, she published her
memoirs book "Golem of Prague", a wonderful story of a woman that
experienced human bestiality as a child but never lost her capacity to love.
Her
heart, tired from so much effort but full of youth and wishes, sometimes asks
for a break and that is the only reason why she hardly made any individual exhibitions
in recent years. But while resting, she doesn’t stop creating or learning new
techniques of creating prints, painting and collage. Her new paintings, which
appear along with this interview, are expected to be soon hanging in a gallery.
Susy ‘s public is also looking forward to it. Eagerly.
At
five years old, Susy Dembo had to leave her native Austria, due to the
rise of Nazism, which took away her country and nationality. She arrived in Bolivia, a country she loves
because it gave her back her humanity. She lived there until adolescence, and
then she settled in Venezuela and integrated so fully that while listening to
her talk, it is impossible to think that she is not from Caracas. That ability
to assimilate accents and cultures is reflected in her work and her life. In
Susy, the drama that split her childhood doesn’t show; she is cheerful,
restless, curious. Her work also has these qualities, combined with a touch of
magic and mystery.
Susy
Dembo started painting in 1960. Two years later she ventured into enamel. In
1972 she began to make prints, and in 1988 she started working with glass. Her
work, however, is one, and perhaps the
secret is that everything is done with the same passion and talent.
A
sunny morning, under the watchful eyes of her last paintings, we chatted at her
workshop in Prados del Este in Caracas, drinking Tibetan tea and eating
delicious Venezuelan cheeses.
- Susy, how
did you get started?
-
I started painting rocks in the sea, like all crazy girls at the club Puerto
Azul. The stones were very beautiful while rough at the same time, so I looked for
a workshop of art with enamel and found that of Francisco Porras; there I studied
when I had money and when I didn’t, I studied at the Free Art Workshop. I was a
good enameler and my work with enamel was liked very much. But then, impatience
led me in 1971, to study engraving at the University Simón Bolívar and with
Nena Palacios. I also studied with Luis Chacón and many years later with
Candido Millan, I learned glass techniques. But printing pretty much took
almost fifteen years of my life.
- Studying it or working
on it?
-
Both, because you can’t make prints without studying, since it is a perfect
chemistry technique. If you want absolute neatness and perfection, which took
me a lot to acquire, you have to do it by the book: with a press, an engraving
table, all the tools, water to soak in a tub, blotting paper and everything else.
That takes a lot of time.
- Fifteen years
dedicated to prints, where you gained great recognition. How was your
transition to painting?
-
Actually, I always painted. I studied with Francisco and Pilar Aranda, my
Spanish professors, and then I painted still life because I didn’t have any
knowledge to do anything else. They told me that still life wasn’t enough; they
saw the human figure in me. But I would not venture into this area, because it
was very difficult and I did not want to risk it. So I continued with enamel
and still life, landscapes of Ávila. But then I dedicated myself entirely to
printing and I no longer painted, nor enameled.
- You fell in love
with printing.
-
Yes, because it's alchemical, it’s magical, it’s dark and you have to work hard
in order to reach satisfaction and for me, it’s always very mysterious. It's
like working at a workshop in the sixteenth century.
(...)
Caracas, July 2004
Fragment. Full interview in:
Julio Cortázar, writer: "A day in my life is always a beautiful thing, because I am very happy to be alive"
Esther Dita Kohn de Cohen, founder of the Anna Frank Space: (in the Holocaust, the family) "there were more or less about 500 people; we don't know exactly how many were killed, that was terrible”
Julio Emilio Moliné, co-director “Joan Baez in Latin America: There but for fortune” (clandestine documentary, 1981): “Joan received death threats, and was banned, persecuted…”
Elisa Lerner, writer: “Solitude is the writer's homeland”
Susy Dembo, visual artist: "Engraving is alchemical, it is magical"
Nava Semel, writer: And the Rat Laughed with Jane Fonda
José Pulido, poet: “I'm like a castaway clinging to his tongue”
Rolando Peña, visual artist: "We baptized the group in a bathtub, and the godfather was Andy Warhol"
Carlos Giménez, theater director: “Our country is the empire of consummated facts, of de facto culture”
Beatriz Iriart, poet: “By when I was 10, I was an old woman already. Writing poetry was a way of transmuting that pain”
Dinapiera Di Donato, poet: "Imagination creates versions of life, but I cannot understand life without a version."
María Lamadrid, founder of "África Vive": “We are the first disappeared people in Argentina”
Mariana Rondón, filmmaker: "During my childhood, I thought cinema was only one movie: Yellow Submarine"
Roland Streuli, photographer: “My life is color, I am not an opaque or black and white person”
Viviana Marcela Iriart (1958) is an Argentine-Venezuelan writer and interviewer. She studied journalism for a year in La Plata, Argentina, but for being a pacifist, she was exiled by the Argentine dictatorship in 1979. Venezuela granted her asylum, and four months later, at the age of 21, she wrote her first professional report... on Julio Cortázar, an interview included in this book.
She has published novels, plays, and three books on Carlos Giménez: ¡Bravo Carlos Giménez!, Carlos Giménez el genio irreverente, and María Teresa Castillo-Carlos Giménez-Caracas International Theater Festival 1973-1992.
She is the founder of the publishing house Escritoras Unidas & Cía. Editoras and the cultural blog of the same name.
INTERVIEWS, with graphic design by Jairo Carthy, is available on AMAZON in paperback and ebook versions.
