Lidya Buzio 
(1948-2014)

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Lidya Buzio left the rural countryside for the urban environment of New York in 1971, where her earthenware sculptures and vessels began to reflect the rooflines, cast iron architecture, and water towers of the city skyline. Cutting her earthenware slabs into geometric shapes, and combining these cylinders, cones, and hemispheres to form the body of her sculptures, Buzio would then draw and paint directly onto her unfired works using special pigments which she mixed herself.  Before firing, Buzio burnished her pieces, fusing the paint into the clay and thereby achieving the unique luminosity and distinctive hues that characterize her work. Buzio's ceramics are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum (NY); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); San Francisco Fine Arts Museums (CA); Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (MO); Everson Museum of Art NY); the Racine Art Museum (WI) ; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS); the Honolulu Academy of Art (HI); Victoria & Albert Museum (London); the National Museum of History and the Museum of Fine Art (Taiwan).  Buzio’s work is also included in several other international museums and private collections.