Lidya Buzio

b. 1948, Montevideo, Uruguay -  d. 2014, Greenport, New York

A unique talent in the world of ceramics, Buzio learned to create, form, and shape clay sculptures from the master ceramicist José Collell, based on ancient Amerindian practices.  Buzio continued to work within this same method, cutting earthenware slabs into geometric shapes, and then combining these cylinders, cones, and hemispheres to form the body of her sculptures.  Using special pigments which she mixed herself, the artist drew and painted directly onto her unfired works.  Before firing, Buzio burnished her pieces; this step serves to fuse the paint into the clay and results in the unique luminosity and distinctive hues that characterize her artworks. 

After moving to New York in the early 70s', Buzio's pictorial vocabulary shifted to reflect her new urban surroundings, inspiring her to create her New York Cityscapes, with their evocative rooflines, cast iron architecture, and water towers.  Her last series of abstract geometric designs executed in bright primary colors, represented a new direction in her practice. 

Buzio's ceramics are found in the Brooklyn Museum New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; the Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; the Honolulu Academy of Art, Hawaii; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the National Museum of History and the Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan.  Buzio’s work is also included in several other international museums and private collections.

Please click for Chronology and CV

Ceramics

Lidya Buzio
Ceramics

Gallery exhibition catalogue with essay written by Garth Clark and 147 pages with images that illustrate the evolution of Buzio’s major work.

 

$ 20.00 + postage

Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. is pleased to present an installation of works by two highly original artists who developed a strong pictorial attachment to New York City, incorporating its urban landscape in their work in different media and through their own formal means.

Argentine artist Sarah Grilo (1919-2007) moved to New York City in 1962 after being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was at this critical point that the artist broke from her background in Concrete abstraction and began to incorporate formal elements from the NYC landscape. From the graffiti that ran rampant throughout the City at that time, to the traces of letters and numbers from deteriorating signs and posters, Grilo covered her works with compulsively repetitive, erased, and re-written spontaneous scribbles, all sustained by a hyper-chromatic sensibility ranging from the most resplendent of golds to the deepest of violets, and from the loudest of turquoise and fuchsias, to the palest of yellows and sky blues. In 1970, Grilo left her urban muse to move to Europe where she lived the remainder of her life.

Lidya Buzio (1948-2014), the Uruguayan American ceramist, moved to New York City in the early 1970s, and fell in love with downtown New York. Her new urban environment inspired her to create her signature New York Cityscapes through her work with clay. Buzio’s fascinations were downtown New York’s evocative rooflines, its cast iron architecture, and water towers. Known for her conflation of sculpture and painting, Buzio went beyond the medium of pottery to create her very own genre. Using special pigments which she mixed herself, the artist drew and painted directly onto her unfired works and burnished her pieces before firing, resulting in the unique luminosity and distinctive hues that characterize her artworks.

Like two ships in the night inspired by different elements of New York City’s urban aesthetic, both artists created lyrical compositions that enable us to witness their process: from Grilo’s drips of paint and gestural markings, to Buzio’s luminous hues and original use of the medium of clay.

The City as Muse: Works by Lidya Buzio and Sarah Grilo. Exhibition Press Release

Amy Albracht Review- Courtesy of CFile Foundation, January 20, 2014

Graciela Kartofel Review - Courtesy of Art Nexus, Number 89, Volume 13, 2013

Wladimir Vivas Review - Courtesy of Info Ceramica, March 1, 2013

Esperanza León Review - Courtesy of Hamptons Art Hub, February 20, 2013

Robert C. Morgan Review - Courtesy of American Ceramics Magazine, Volume 15, Number 1, 2006

Benjamin Genocchio Review - Courtesy of The New York Times, September 17, 2006

New York Times Magazine Cover (September 23,1984)

Remembering Lidya Buzio (1948-2014)

Remembering Lidya Buzio (1948-2014)

We are deeply saddened to share the news of Lidya Buzio's passing. Buzio's legacy as a unique talent lives on in her ceramic artworks.

 

"Change must come slowly, truthfully,...Collel put that into my brain. He felt that one must stumble upon the new not pursue it. But I cannot remain just with abstraction. I may still go back and forth between total abstraction and reality, since the abstraction comes from reality. My end goal is a created world. And tomorrow? Who knows where I will be."

Lidya Buzio quoted in Garth Clark's essay "The House at 5510", Lidya Buzio Ceramics, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., 2012

 

"The effect offered by Buzio, whether in clay or wood, is an illusory one, a magical feast, a post structural ensemble of playful extruded forms. The illusion of these shapes, colors and linear patterns accumulates, after a stealthy period of euphoric contemplation, into something replete with innuendo, obstreperously shifting in scale and proportion. These ironic architectonic deconstructions resemble a psychic phenomenon, the kind that one may feel in those congested screen sets from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Whatever the phenomenon-whether psychic or aesthetic-Buzio has done it. Her glazed and burnished ceramic spectacles are so carefully

Robert C. Morgan, Lidya Buzio, American Ceramics, Vol.15 No. 1, 2006

Lidya Buzio: Ceramics featured in CFile

Lidya Buzio: Ceramics featured in CFile

We are please to announce the Lidya Buzio: Ceramics catalogue being featured in CFile.

For more information, please click here.

Lidya Buzio Featured in Cerámica magazine

Lidya Buzio Featured in Cerámica magazine

We are pleased to announce that Lidya Buzio is being featured in the following magazine article:

Forma y color o un mundo de sensaciones, by Antonio Vivas, Revista Internacional Cerámica, № 103, 2013

Lidya Buzio Exhibition Reviews

Lidya Buzio Exhibition Reviews

We are pleased to share Lidya Buzio's exhibition reviews:

Esperanza Leon in the Hamptons Art Hub

Wladimir Vivas in Info Ceramica

Graciela Kartofel in Art Nexus

Lidya Buzio's exhibit featured in Carnegie Hall Event

Lidya Buzio's exhibit featured in Carnegie Hall Event

We're proud to announce that Lidya Buzio's exhibition will be featured in Voices from Latin America

From November 8 through December 11, 2012 Carnegie Hall pays tribute to Latinamerican cultures in a citywide festival through events at prestigious partner organizations. With more than 60 events, the festival includes music, dance, film, art, photography, and more.

For more information about the event please visit www.carnegiehall.org/latinamerica

Lidya Buzio ceramic at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Lidya Buzio ceramic at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston

We are pleased to announce that a beautiful 1984 ceramic piece by Lidya Buzio is featured in Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramics, The Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio Collection, currently on exhibition at the MFAH through June 3, 2012.