Koczÿ, Rosemarie
Germany, 1939 – 2007
Rosemarie Inge Koczÿ was born in Recklinghausen. According to her memoir, in 1942 her family was first deported to a concentration camp near Dachau and then to the Ottenhausen where they remained until 1945. After the end of the World War II, she moved in with her grandparents until the death of her grandmother, after which she was placed in an orphanage. When she turned twenty, Rosemarie reunited with her grandfather and with his support had enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs of Geneva where she learned the art of tapestry weaving. Koczÿ had produced more than seventy tapestries within the two decades. She was dedicated two solo exhibitions in Geneva and received a commission from Peggy Guggenheim. The artist opened two community art schools, one in Switzerland and the other in the United States. In 1975 her focus switched towards drawing: as she explained, although the faces of the victims of concentration camps appeared in her tapestries, she was not able to convey the intensity of trauma through textile. She had produced over twelve thousand ink drawings in an effort to return dignity and to re-remember those who were effaced from Earth. The inscription I Weave You a Shroud appeared at the verso of each of her works. Her works are housed in such institutions as The Guggenheim NY and Guggenheim Venice Museums, The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, The Anthony Petullo Collection, The Kupferberg Holocaust Center, The Collection de l’Art Brut, The Galerie Miyawaki of Kyoto and The Israeli Holocaust Memorial Museum.
