26 Facts About Trude Sojka

Trude Sojka was born in Berlin, Germany and died in Quito, Ecuador.

Trude Sojka's father, Rudolf Sojka, was an engineer, who had business dealings with the Ecuadorian president Eloy Alfaro pertaining to the Ecuadorian Railway system.

Trude Sojka was so bored that she spent her time drawing caricatures of her teacher.

Trude Sojka's father died a couple of years later of a heart attack.

In 1938, Trude Sojka married Dezider Schwartz, a Slovak civil servant.

Trude Sojka survived for nearly a year in the camp mainly due to her ability for massage.

Trude Sojka was fascinated by the culture, the indigenous people and the landscape.

Trude Sojka discovers is the autochthonous and aboriginal art, that she starts studying as soon as possible: a source of inspiration to her own works.

When Trude Sojka arrived in Guayaquil, she met a good friend of her brother, who was a Holocaust survivor, who managed to run away from Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the excuse he had been hired as a lawyer by a cotton company in Ecuador.

Trude Sojka was helped out by honorary consul of Ecuador in Bremen Jose Ignacio Burbano Rosales, recognized for opening the door of his country to so many Jews.

Trude Sojka even gets to teach sculpture to Oswaldo Guayasamin.

Trude Sojka managed to overcome it with a minimum of memory loss.

Trude Sojka continued, though, to make heavy paintings and sculptures with cement and recycled materials up to the age of ninety-five.

At the beginnings of 2007, Trude Sojka suffered a Respiratory failure.

Trude Sojka's remains rest in the Jewish cemetery in the city of Quito, along with those of her husband.

Trude Sojka's work evolved in response to the various experiences in her life.

Trude Sojka studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where she became familiar with Expressionism.

Trude Sojka became familiar with the works of Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and Georges Rouault.

Trude Sojka deeply admired the sculptures of Ernst Barlach and is likely to have personally known the work of the expressionist-realist Kathe Kollwitz.

Walter and Liddy Trude Sojka had employed a number of locals who were reproducing all kinds of useful and traditional objects to sell and even export to other countries in America and Europe.

In Europe, Trude Sojka became already interested in the primitive art of Africa, Oceania and America.

Trude Sojka worked a lot around the meaning of her last name: Sojka, a bird that wanders around the woods of eastern Europe.

Trude Sojka's works are considered to be very special as well because of its technique.

Trude Sojka came up with the idea because she loved to work with clay, but cement was cheaper and more challenging.

Trude Sojka covered the gray surfaces with acrylics instead of oils, much widely in use at the beginning of the fifties.

Trude Sojka's artworks are thus very heavy and fragile because they can easily break.