To trust the unknowable ( About Gustav and Ulla Kraitz)
I think about the idea that all we do should result in measurable profit. It is a rational approach that spreads across all areas of life, Also relationships. Before we enter something we speculate on if it is worth our energy. I believe that, in the long run, struggles itu us, from within.
Gustav and Ulla Kraitz, An artist couple I met at their gallery in Skåne has something else to tell. Gustav was born 1926 In Hungary. When he was 23 and went to the Academy of Arts in Budapest was occupied by the Soviet Union. 600.000 Hungarians were taken as prisoners of war, was brought to prison camps for forced labor, Among them Gustav. For five years he was forced and 3000 other men shovel coal, up to seven tons a day. Only five percent survived.
1956 he managed to flee to Sweden and soon he met the young artist Ulla. The meeting gave rise to a common idea of the art that carried them through life and the world. The seed was sown at the East Asian Museum where both were fascinated by a small ceramic fish from 900 the China of the speech. The glaze contained an enigmatic beauty, as if it shimmered by a light deep from within. They wanted to achieve the same. How was a mystery. There wasn't exactly any manual. Years of patient experimentation and repeated failures taught them how the huge oven would be built, How clay, fuel, weather and wind could interact, and not least the decisive fire of fire in achieving the vision. One thing was early for sure. The fire requires an tireless shuffling of, among other things, coal. Gustav returned with his body, mind and power to the same action he was forced to in the prison camp during death threats.
But now to master the burning that can evoke the unique glaze that enchants the works, makes the shapes Ulla create touches us higher, deeper. Jag tänkte, Imagine returning to precisely the act that the oppressor forced him in the most brutal way, Imagine overcoming what the memory of the body must carry, because he was driven by the vision of achieving the beauty of the glaze that for a thousand years has been forgotten. Imagine not backing already at the moment it was clear what the burning requires. Imagine swinging over the memory of the pain, defy the deeply etched humiliation for the hope of happily creating the beauty of the unique glaze.
Strangely enough, The sparkling strength is in us humans.
Today Gustav and Ulla's ceramic works of art are loved all over the world, It is an ongoing tribute to the art, livet, the resistance, literally manifested in the Raoul Wallenberg monument outside the UN in New York. And an individual's, An artist's victory over human evil.
I didn't know anything about this, but was tenderly affected by the visible simplicity of the forms, As everyone is about life. In them there is something infinitely expressive.
I am thinking that this would not have been done if Gustav and Ulla Kraitz had speculated on the benefit of their driving force and idea, If it was the effort worth following their strong vision. I think of creation, resistance and the defiant tribute of life, But above all, I think of the power of trusting the unknown.
