Exhibition in the synagouge: Marika DANČ-ROTH

Gallery – Museum Lendava cordially invites you and all your friends to attend the opening of an exhibition of works by Marika Danč-Roth.

It will take place at 6:00 p.m. on 10 September 2021 in the Lendava Synagogue.

Dubravko Baumgartner, Director of Gallery – Museum Lendava, and Janez Magyar, Mayor of the Lendava Municipality will conduct the opening ceremonies.

Art historian Tanja Šimonka will open the exhibition.

Klarisa Jovanović and Igor Bezget will provide the musical program.

THE INVITATION

Marika Danč-Roth

Marika Danč-Roth (Photo: Ladislav Meselič)

1950
Born on March 17 in Lendava

1972
Graduated from the Art Department of the Pedagogical Academy in Zagreb

1973
Membership to the Association of Fine and Applied Arts of Croatia (ULUPUH) in Zagreb and status as an independent professional artist

1973
First independent costume design: the opera Orpheus and Eurydice at the Croatian National Theater in Split

1977–79
President of the Textile Department at ULUPUH

1980
Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb

1983
Moved to Munich; worked as a freelance artist

1991–
Participated in various independent and group exhibitions across Europe and the USA

2001–15
Assistant Professor at the Community College (VHS) Munich/Haar

2015–
Returned to and continued working in Lendava

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
In Praise of Fingers and Threads

Lendava – an enigmatic junction with a sense of beauty in the air; for being from Lendava means endeavoring toward the love of beauty, aesthetics, and the rhythm of images that form the ineffable charm we identify with and belong to. Marika Danč-Roth’s works – be they tapestries or relief paintings – carry a visual record of vineyards, furrowed fields, tree-covered hills, the classic harmony of the city’s architectural contours and the elegant harmony of its much-lauded vista.

A Hungarian-Slovenian-Croatian-Jewish-Yugoslav mixture at the crossroads of an Austro-Hungarian and Balkan heritage that has never allowed nationalist exclusivity, makes the artist’s birth place meaningful. Patriotism here implies an ingrained connection with the landscape and the people with whom we have had and still have real, and not imaginary, relationships; with people resounding in the chronicles of local events, and in biographies of those who have lived in the region.

In the 15 years during and after her studies, until her move to Germany, Marika composed a stunningly diversified and rich oeuvre, whose artistic flourish won excellent reviews and generated many prestigious commissions, collaborations and awards for all her chosen genres. Costume design, fine arts and fashion; tapestry, weaving, and crafting in thread are what characterized her from the beginning.

Jagoda Buić’s exceptional mentorship and Marika’s readiness for hard labor and boundless creativity soon shaped her characteristic, expressive signature in a complex artistic discipline whose soft contours of (mostly) natural materials demand the knowledge of a draftsman, painter, designer, architect, sculptor, scenographer, illustrator, and, naturally, the technical mastering of dyeing and weaving processes. Her artistic invention in tapestry techniques originated in a manner defined by her mentor, but very early on Marika began weaving in a unique style within the modern perception of the craft.

Although she has gone through various genres and periods in more than half a century of creativity, Marika’s works are profiled and shaped throughout, marked by the anatomy of trees woven into relief structures of tapestries, macramé reliefs and, of course, numerous drawings. In the grooves of woolen roots, under the poetic softness of her pencil, in the filigree extravagance of lavishly detailed macramé sculptures made with masterful perfectionism in imposing natural materials, her trees are a metaphor that represents life, tradition, origin, growth, sensitivity and unwavering strength all at once.

Roots and trees mean maps of nostalgia to Marika, memories and places where she and everyone who is important to her have lived. On walks in forests, gardens, galleries, theaters and cemeteries, landscapes and metropolises – she carries sketchbook and pencil to record every impression. Her artistic endeavors are never self-sufficient monologues, but dialogues and contexts permeated with echoes, traditions and reflections of times and people.

In the early 1990s, Marika replaced her large, heavy tapestries, where material and rawness predominated, with sophisticated, porous structures, mainly in the knotting technique, and no longer done on weaving machines/looms. Her fascination with the mythicized banyan tree and its interminable roots intertwining and growing over the picture’s surface and frame became an interpretation and artistic expression characteristic of her alone. It heralds a new chapter in the history of tapestry, although we must bear in mind that drawings are the starting point for designs in this technique. A gifted painter, she took up painting again in the early 1990s, with drawings on paper that she filled with applications, juxtaposing and harmonizing the wool, cords, paper and pencil. Her innovative combination of macramé and drawing presents an unusual blend of plasticity and flatness, with elegant colors and strict black and white.

At the beginning of the new millennium, after the monumental dimensions of her tapestries, luxurious, colorful and richly fabricated costumes and graceful roots in the relief technique of drawing and macramé, Marika turned to drawing as an independent technique. Her small, intimate drawings on paper hinted at changes that were not only artistically intoned. The basic tree motif now appeared completely restrained, introspective, diary-like.

Marika Danč-Roth’s novel-like life and layered artistic story, not without dramatic features, speaks of talent and meticulous consistency that had the opportunity to find themselves in a milieu of time and space with extraordinary possibilities. Marika seized them and lived them wholeheartedly. Indeed, she created all the while in a workaholic and perfectionist manner, and toward the end of the story, she returned to where she started. Home, to her roots.

Tanja Šimonka, art historian

FINE ARTS WORKS