She was unlucky to speak German, as most articles related to the aforementioned exhibition say. The cosmopolitan artist, who participated in the Venice Biennale four times, represented Czechoslovakia at the 1937 World Exhibition – and yet her name hovered for a long time on the verge of oblivion in the Czech context. How did this happen?
She was born to an Austrian officer in Vienna in 1898, and due to her father's profession, the family moved frequently – and in 1919 she became one of the first two female students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She joined the studio of Jan Štursa and, in addition to her artistic training, she also found her life partner Maxim Kopf there, with whom she lived in Dresden after her studies, and they also spent time in New York, Paris, and Prague. She exhibited in Prague, Paris, and Berlin, was a member of the Pilgergruppe, Junge Kunst, and Prager Sezession groups, and from 1928 she was also a member of the Berliner Sezession, and based on her previous success, she was also promised a solo exhibition in Berlin. The marriage, which was apparently quite complicated, ended in 1933, when Hitler was just coming to power. The dream of a major exhibition in Berlin was shattered by political events, and Mary Duras fell into a deep depression as a result of the breakup of her marriage and fears of war. She was treated in psychiatric hospitals and almost stopped creating. Only a new relationship with Arnold Schück helped her overcome the crisis. However, her incipient return to creation was interrupted by Munich and the events of 1939. Mary Duras spent the period of World War II in exile. From London, she tried in vain to obtain visas for her second husband and his family to South America, but almost all of his family did not survive World War II. Mary Duras was reunited with her husband and returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 so that they could live together. However, his family lost their property during the communist regime, the villa was confiscated, and in the 1960s, Mary and her husband finally emigrated. They settled in Hamburg, and after her husband's death she moved to Graz, where she lived out her life.
Mary Duras has established herself beyond the Czechoslovak space of the 20th century: her approach differs from interwar neoclassicism and her work is dominated by female figures, portraits and reliefs. Mary Duras is a sculptor who has a sense of the message that she hides in the way she presents an immersion in physical beauty. The secret of this method may lie in the sly thought of the model, speaking to us through the sensitive modeling of expression.
The sculpture of Ivanka – the work of the month of January – is also modeled naturally, lightly, with a special feeling for inner events. I believe that this is what makes it an unmissable sculpture: a portrait of a girl, from whom a special sadness and at the same time certainty radiates. A sculpture that forces you to look at it. Perhaps it is a reflection of the determination that Mary Duras must have had enormously.
Lucie Nováčková