Lydia Buzio

1948, Montevideo, Uruguay - 2014, Greenport, New York 

Lydia Buzio’s early years as an artist were influenced by her close association with the Joaquin Torres-García family and the artists of the Taller Torres-García, including her teachers José Montes, Guillermo Fernández, Horacio Torres and Josep Collell. Joaquin Torres-Garcia founded Constructive Universalism and established the Taller Torres-Garcia school in Montevido, Uruguay in 1943.

Through her work with the ceramicist Collell, Buzio developed technically and artistically, creating her clay sculpture from earthenware slabs and forming their shapes with the use of curved patterns, drawing and then painting directly on the unfired clay.  Buzio left behind the bucolic landscapes and still lives that had informed her earlier work when she settled in New York City in 1971. Reflecting her new surroundings, her vessels depicted the buildings and skyline of lower Manhattan, their forms also changing as the geometry of the landscape had. 

 Buzio moved out to the North Fork of Long Island in the 1990’s and began to work with the landscape, seascape and architectural elements of the rural villages in her ceramic sculptures. The blues of the sea and sky vividly contrasted with the blacks, reds and whites of the boats and harbors that appear in this work. Rounder, yet sometimes cloven or pierced, she continued to create the duple effect that is emblematic of her work. In 2009, Buzio began work on a series of abstract geometric vessels that she continued to explore until her death in 2014.