Irena Bliihova

Background

Irena Bliihova was born in 1904 in Povazska Bystrica, Zilina, Slovakia.

Education

Bliihova studied at the Bauhaus Academy of Arts in Dessau, Germany (1931-33), with Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers and at the School of Photography of the School of Artistic Craftsmanship, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (1936-37). She later received an MA (1957) from the University of Pedagogics in Bratislava.

Career

Bliihova most recently founded and directed the Slovak Pedagogic Library in Bratislava (1951-65). Previously she directed the Folk Art Industry cooperative in Bratislava (1949-51) and both founded and headed the publishing and printing house Pravda (1945-48). From 1933 to 1941 she served as editor-in-chief of a publishing house at Bratislava.

Bliihova co-founded and taught for Sociofoto, the society of progressive photographers at Bratislava, from 1933 to 1939. In 1976 she won the medal of the Building Academy of the German Democratic Republic on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus.

She called her work "socially committed photography," and said she was "one of the first photographers to document the life of the toilers." Bliihova has also done portraits and landscapes.

Achievements

• PUBLICATIONS Books: No News for Kate, 1966; The First Steps, Mlade leta, 1959 (Bratislava).
  
  

Connections

Bluhova's husband, Weiner-Kral (1901-78), was a painter, graphic artist and theoretician.

Friend:

Wassily Kandinsky

Bliihova studied at the Bauhaus Academy of Arts in Dessau, Germany (1931-33), with Wassily Kandinsky.

Friend:

Josef Albers

Bliihova studied at the Bauhaus Academy of Arts in Dessau, Germany (1931-33), with Josef Albers.

teacher:

Karol Plicka

Irena Bliihova studied at the School of Photography of the School of Artistic Craftsmanship, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (1936-37), under Karol Plicka.

teacher:

Jaromir Funke

Irena Bliihova studied at the School of Photography of the School of Artistic Craftsmanship, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (1936-37), under Jaromir Funke.