Zuzana Graus Rudavska: Jewellery - Object - Painting

Artist list

Zuzana Graus Rudavská

"Zuzana Graus Rudavská is an artist of many talents. Among her contemporaries in United States and Slovakia - two countries where she lives and works – there are very few of those, who can bring together successfully the delicacy of weaving and the monumentality of the wooden block in a single work. Zuzana’s studies of textile techniques at the College of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and later in Prague profoundly influenced her work. The ever present tendency to include fragments of fiber in her pieces or utilize the compositional structures associated with weaving and transferring it into most varried materials is a clear proof.

Rudavska is equally sensitive toward the properties of various materials she is using. She has never chosen her significant material - that would curb the freedom of her creative process. Thus the artist is immersed in the world of countless possibilities exploring the delicacy of a thread or the coarsens of the rope, the flexibility of the copper wire, the classical attributes of bronze or the endless transformation of wood. Zuzana Rudavska is exploring all of these elements fully aware that all of them serve her to create formally and conceptually exceptional works“.

Charlotta Kotik
Curator of painting and sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, New York

"Zuzana Graus Rudavska creates extremely wearable jewelry. It is simple yet also holds strongly its own against a visually competing garment. The work is very much about its materials (woven metals, silver, gold, copper, brass, pearl, semi-precious stones) - showing great respect for how they work together. In essence, Rudavska lets the material do the talking about her pieces. Many secrets are hidden in the work, discovering the flexibility and softness of textiles in metal mesh. These combinations become gossamer wire scarves and bracelets of both geometric forms, a study in contrast. They are accented with seemingly weightless punctuations of pearls and semi-precious stones.

In scarfs Rudavska’s fabrication techniques allow the wearer creative licence to mold the jewelry according to whim or to follow the contours of her own body. This is a privilege not often found in contemporary design."

Susan Grant Lewin
Curator and design writer, New York
Author of a book: One of a Kind – American Art Jewelry Today, USA