Literature and Authors
Here we want to profile literature and authors.
Biographical information for the artists we have completed below is extracted either from their websites, whose links may be reached by clicking on the artists’ names, or from the following sources:
Die vergessenen Europäer: Kunst der Roma. Roma in der Kunst. Ed. Kurt Holl. Köln: Verlag des Rom e.V. Köln, 2009.
Hancock, Ian. We are the Romani people/Ame sam e Rromane dzene.Hertfordshire: University of Herfordshire Press, 2002.
We are continuing to work on the biographies and lists of published works for the writers below. If you have any literary works or authors you wish to profile, please leave a comment below.
Ceija Stojka
Ceija Stojka is a Romani writer and artist, born in 1933 in Austria. When she was young, her family traveled in a caravan, belonging to a Romani tribe called the “Lowara Roma.” Stojka, as well as her mother and four of her five brothers, survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen during the Holocaust. Her bright, vibrant art and detailed and moving poetry illustrate life as a Romani before, during and after the Holocaust.
Bronislaw “Papusza” Wajs
Bronislawa Wajs was born in 1910 in Poland. She wrote many volumes of poetry that was influential in providing hope for the Romani people during the Second World War. She survived the Holocaust by hiding in the forests of Poland and wrote her memoir Bloody Tears: What We Endured Under the Nazis in Volhynia in ’43 and’44, in which she shares many aspects of traditional Roma culture. She died in 1987.
Ruzdija Russo Sejdovic
Mariella Mehr
Philomena Franz
Ronald Lee
Jánosz Balász
Janosz Balasz ist a Romani writer and painter born in Hungary in 1905. He is famous for his Romani-expressionist paintings, which symbolize a true Romani originality. His paintings have been widely presented; the most famous exhibition was with other Roma artists in 1979 in Budapest.
Veijo Baltzar
Sylvester Boswell
Hristo Botev
József Choli Daróczi
Tera Fabiánová
Wladislaw Jakowicz
Sandra Jayat
Sandra Jayat was born in Italy to Gypsy parents, eventually moving to Paris, France to begin her career as an artist. She writes literature and poetry and paints colorful expressionist-style pieces. As a self-taught artist, she throws aside the rule book to create her own flavor of art. She self-exclaims that her artwork is “surreal”. Her Jayat’s paintings are bright, colorful, and full of movement.
Usin Kerim
Elena Lacková author of A False Dawn
Leksa Manus (Alexander Belugins)
Matéo Maximoff