Irene Kovaliska Biography
The ceramist Irene Kowaliska was born in Warsaw (Poland) in 1905 and studied at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna where she moved as a child with her family and where she graduated in 1927. After a stay in Berlin, where she married the poet Armin Wegner and in Vallauris, where he approached ceramics, he arrived in Vietri Marina for the first time in 1931 and here he collaborated, for a year, with the ICS" (Industria Ceramica Salernitana) factory owned by the German industrialist Max Melamerson and where he met Richard Dolker At "ICS" she created works with a popular and naïve flavor inspired by the life and tradition of the place. In 1932 she opened a collaboration with Vincenzo Pinto's "ICAM" (Industria Ceramiche Artistiche Meridionali), which provided her with its own studio. The following year he took a trip to Sardinia and in 1933 he moved to the French Riviera where he opened a small ceramic workshop, but disappointed by the local firing techniques he returned to Vietri where he settled and resumed collaborating with the "ICAM". In 1937, having left "ICAM", he opened his own small laboratory which remained active until the outbreak of the Second World War. At the end of the war Irene Kowaliska left her workshop, destroyed by bombing, and moved from Vietri to Positano where in her "Positano Studio" she dedicated herself to weaving fabrics, until her definitive move to Rome in 1956. In Rome she he dedicated himself to the creation of icons on glass and to embroidery and opened his studio to young people eager for art. In 1965 he returned to visit Vietri and on this occasion made some samples for the "CAS" owned by Vincenzo Solimene. A few years later he painted a plate for "Ri.Fa." by Matteo Rispoli. Irene Kowaliska is considered among the greatest exponents of the so-called German colony of Vietri, to which she owes so much the rebirth and success of Vietri ceramic production on the markets. Irene Kowaliska died in Rome in 1991.
