AGATHA WOJCIECHOWSKY
b. 1896, Steinach, Germany
d. 1986, New York, NY, USA
WORKS | BIOGRAPHY | EXHIBITIONS | VIDEO
SELECTED WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Agatha Wojciechowsky spent her youth at her birthplace Steinach a. d. Saale in Lower Franconia, Germany. Already as a little girl she reported having frequently visions. At the age of 28 she emigrated to the US. There she worked as a maid, seamstress, laundress and kitchen assistant in various hotels, later as a governess in the household of a German baron. She married, had two children and began to occupy herself intensively with spiritualism, eventually becoming a medium and spiritual healer. In 1961 Agatha Wojciechowsky was ordained a priestess of the "Universal Spiritualist Association", Camp Chesterfield, IN.
In 1951 she had begun to write and draw automatically. Under the control of her spirit guide Mona, a Native American girl, she embarked on the adventure of producing mediumistic drawings although she had no idea how this would work. According to her, the actual authors of her works were various deceased people, including important artists like Paolo Veronese. In the beginning she worked mostly with pencil, crayon or ink, later she also painted with watercolors.
Often Agatha Wojciechowsky drew heads of discarnate entities in profile or frontal view, single figures or groups of figures – at times with a hard stroke, dark and gloomy, others by applying the pencil delicately. Frequently she filled the entire sheet with a confusing multitude of crossing lines from which faces and figures seem to emerge, sometimes together with elements of her automatic writing in unknown characters. The appearance of discarnate entities also plays a central role in her flamboyant watercolors. One of her specialties was to trace the outlines of a client's hand placed on a piece of paper and later to fill this form with faces and shapes that she explained were related to the client's life.
The unique fascination of Agatha Wojciechowsky's works was recognized early by important art dealers and gallerists, like Arne Ekstrom of the Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery in New York, Rudolf Zwirner in Cologne, and Rudolf Springer in Berlin.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2015 Agatha Wojciechowsky, Warum ich meine Hände nicht ruhig halten kann, Galerie Suzanne Zander, Cologne, February 20 - April 11
2007 Galerie Suzanne Zander, Cologne
2001 Galerie Suzanne Zander, Cologne
1980 Agatha Wojciechowsky, Ramapo College Gallery, Mahwah, NJ
1978 Agatha Wojciechowsky, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne
1972 J. Walter Thompson Gallery, New York
1967 Galerie Springer, Berlin
1966 Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne
Galerie Neuendorf, Hamburg
1963 Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery, New York
VIDEO
This is an external link to the website of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, where the short but fascinating film The Art Mediumship of Agatha Wojciechowsky, by Charles O’Neal (1937–2018) can be viewed. The interesting original 8mm footage shows Agatha Wojciechowsky working on a large watercolor.
