Traversing Boundaries: In Conversation with Peter Krausz
- Gabriella Kardos
- Jul 1, 2024
- 16 min read
Updated: Jun 11
Peter Krausz was born in Romania in 1946. He studied mural painting from 1964 to 1969 at the Bucharest Institute of Fine Arts. Since 1970, he has made Montreal his home. His diverse artistic production includes painting, drawing, installation, and photography. From 1980 to 1990, he was the curator of the Saidye Bronfman Centre Art Gallery and a teacher at Concordia University. In 1991, he joined the faculty at the University of Montreal where he is now a tenured Professor of Fine Art in the Art History and Cinema Studies Department. Since 1970, Peter Krausz has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Montreal and across Quebec, Canada, and the United States, as well as in Europe. His works can be found in private and prominent public collections such as The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec, The Montreal Contemporary Art Museum, The Jewish Museum in New York, and many others. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.
Gabriella Kardos: You grew up in an artistic household in Romania, your father a renowned painter and professor, your mother an art historian, curator at the National Gallery of Art. You must have been exposed to discussions about art and art history from an early age. How did that shape your desire/choice of becoming an artist?
Peter Krausz: It was not much of a choice. Like Obélix in Goscinny and Uderzo’s Astérix le Gaulois [Asterix the Gaul], one could say that I fell into the pot from an early age. I listened and later participated in the weekly discussions between painters, sculptors, art historians, and so on in our very open house and started drawing and copying Velázquez paintings from my father’s art books when I was 5 years old. As a teenager, I often accompanied my dad to the month-long summer camps for art students in different areas in Romania, where I was painting and drawing the countryside. So, it was more of a natural development, leading towards the entry exam to the Art Institute in Bucharest.
GK: The theme of borders features strongly in your work. How did it evolve? I imagine your escape from the communist regime of Romania must have played a part in this. Can you recount the experience of crossing the border from the Eastern bloc to the West? What was the political context and what made you decide to leave your native land, risking your ability to ever return, or even imprisonment?
PK: We felt that we were living in a cage—even if towards the middle of the sixties the communist regime was more relaxed, we were not allowed to travel except in other communist countries. And by the end of the decade, we had the feeling that things will only get worse after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact. More nationalism and antisemitism and a feeling that the regime is hardening its authoritarian position. This proved to be true after we left and after Ceausescu’s return from China and his developing cult of personality. The risk I took doesn’t compare to the risk that my parents took, leaving behind their jobs, friends, and family, trying to provide a better future for their son.
