Mary Costanza Sold at Auction Prices

Art is a vehicle the artist uses to convey her philosophy. When an artist makes a statement she is telling you what she thinks and feels about the world in which we live. She is revealing those things which affect and influence her the most. Regardless of her medium, an artist does proselytize; she does publish; she does want to share her feelings. Otherwise, she would not publish; she would not exhibit; she would not perform. —Mary Costanza, 1986

With a profound sensitivity and acute awareness of how people treated one another, Mary Costanza depicted social ills through her art in the hopes of remedying them. In addition to the diverse breadth of her social conscience works and her more intimate mother-child and ethereal landscape paintings, Mary Costanza was a renowned scholar of the Holocaust and of the art of the Holocaust. For most of her adult life, she was relentless in her pursuit to reach every segment of society and to use "whatever devices at hand to deplore the brutality and murder" chronically present in the human condition. To that end, she tirelessly lectured, taught, wrote, and painted to convey her perspectives on prejudice, injustice, hatred, and beauty.

Born into an Italian immigrant family, Mary Costanza graduated from Tyler College of Art, Temple University. In her career as a painter, she has had more than 35 solo art exhibits throughout the world. Her works are in many private collections, galleries, and museums including: Yad Vashem Memorial Museum (Jerusalem); Beit Lohamei Haghetot (Asherot, Israel); Casio Cop. (Japan); Insurance Co. of North America; International Paper Co.; Peter Uberoth; and Roone Arledge. Among her numerous awards and grants, she was named one of 1998's Women of Distinction by Philadelphia Business Journal. In 1999, she was honored for a lifetime of Holocaust education with the Nora Levin Memorial Educators Award.

As a celebrated educator, Mary Costanza was a beloved professor of art at diverse colleges, including Gratz College (Philadelphia). As a dynamic and extremely knowledgeable speaker in the art of the Holocaust, she was engaged throughout the United States at various conferences, universities, and for a multitude of radio and television appearances including "Good Morning America." She published The Living Witness: Art in the Concentration Camps and Ghettos (Free Press, Macmillan), the first compilation of the history of the art produced by Jewish prisoners and survivors of WWII. To accomplish this task, she traveled behind the Iron Curtain to record and interview artist survivors in East Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and Israel. Mary recorded interviews with many important artist-survivors such as Leo Haas, Zoran Music, and Esther Laurie. She also interviewed Gideon Hausner, Chief Prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, whom she met when curator of “Art of the Holocaust” sponsored by the Jewish Museum of Philadelphia. Written documents consist of critical correspondence with Holocaust luminaries such as noted historian Nora Levin, with whom she had a long friendship, and Yehuda Bacon; her own research, articles, reviews, published and unpublished lectures, poetry, and books; and a comprehensive library of books, many of them first editions inscribed by scholars such as Robert St. John, a former New York Times correspondent, Elie Wiesel, and Alfred Kantor. Her archives are now part of the US Holocaust Museum’s (Washington, D.C) permanent collection.

She created "Kaddish for Six Million", a suite of ten lithographs (Yad Vashem permanent collection) with accompanying text, shown at Philadelphia's International Conference on the Holocaust. Two additional completed books on the Holocaust include Children's Roll Call and La Riseria di San Sabba: Effigy of Auschwitz. Mary Costanza believed firmly that education was the key to eliminate repetition of such human tragedies as the Holocaust. To that end, she worked continuously on incorporating an innovative program for educating children, representatives of the future.

As long as I am able, I will continue to paint and write and to teach about the tragedy… As an artist, I indulge the thought that there is no impact as great as the visual image. It has more retentive power than any other form of communication. However, I am aware that the audience who looks at art works is limited. The reading public should be bigger. Every available avenue of communication should be exploited — should be utilized to reach as many as possible. —Mary Costanza, 1990