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CIS/TRANS - Portrait of myself as Countess Cis
Zoltowska (2017-2019)
C-print, 150 x 100 cm, and text (opposite) |
CIS/TRANS
Portrait of myself as Countess Cis Zoltowska
THE STORY OF this work begins with a love affair that
took place in the mid 1960s, when a young student of sculpture at the Academy
of Fine Arts Vienna met an aristocratic Austrian lady and became her lover
for some years. The art student was my father, and the lady was Countess Cis
Zoltowska, a costume and jewelry designer, who had worked in the 1950s and 60s
for French haute couture labels and produced own jewelry collections under the
name ‚CIS of Paris’ and ‚Countess Zoltowska‘.
Cissy Zoltowska, born as Maria Assunta Frankl-Fonseca in
Vienna around 1920, grew up as the daughter of an Austrian father and
a Hungarian mother in an upper class environment at Altmannsdorf Castle, which
at that time had been a meeting point for patrons and lovers of the arts. During
the reign of the Nazis in World War II she was forced to flee to Switzerland,
where she married an elegant but impoverished Polish Count named Zoltowski and
began to make ceramic jewelry. In 1951 Cissy moved to Paris and produced
accessories for fashion labels such as Pierre Balmain, Jacques Fath,
Christian Dior and Balenciaga. Being disappointed that the costume jewelry of her
times imitated only the real thing, she decided to make her own ‚real’ fantasy
jewelry using crackled glass cabochons and Swarovski rhinestones in fancyful
designs and exquisite colour combinations. In the 1960s Maison Cis had around
40 employees and produced two collections with 400 models each per year. They
were distributed worldwide from French boutiques to New York department stores
and frequently appeared on the covers of Vogue, Paris Match and
Harper‘s Bazaar. During that time Cissy lived in Paris and
Vienna, with
longer annual stays in Thailand, from where she drew a lot of her inspiration.
Precededby her reputation as a creative artist and designer, in 1967 Cis
Zoltowska relocated to Los Angeles where she lived in West Hollywood until her
death in 2004. Still on the gangway of her plane to L. A. she tried to persuade
my father to come with her, who finally refused because of his young family and
little child – which was me.
I never have met Cis Zoltowska in person, and learned about
the affair only in recent years by tales of my father.
Later I discovered in the attic of my parent's house old newspaper pages and
photos of Cissy, as well as a hand drawing of her showing a conductor in front
of his orchestra. I realized that it had been her gilded cabochons and metal leaves
with whom I had played as a child, and that there still were objects in my
possession that originally had been a present my father was given by her – such
as an antique Chinese foo dog which I had kept throughout my life. The more I learned
about this extraordinary person the more I became fascinated by her and felt to
be connected with her by a strange affinity: her uncompromising extravagancy
and self-determinedness, her love for the arts, for people and for all things
of beauty, her collection of Buddha statues and Asian antiques, her belief in
reincarnation, which she had expressed in one of her interviews – all this
suggested the image of a woman with whom I seemed to have many things in common
that never had been part of my parent’s world. Had there been an indirect
influence from her through the objects I was surrounded by in my childhood? Or
was it just an ‚accidental’ case of spiritual kinship (if something like that
could ever exist)? In any case she was a tremendous factor in the relationship
of my parents (as my mother got to know of the affair) which has shaped – as an
unsolved source of conflict between them – also my own unconscious personality
and course of life. Whatever the mysterious origins and intricate paths of our
likeness may be, entering her world is for me like coming closer to the core of
my own being: Cis Zoltowska will forever stay deeply embedded in my soul, like a
star transmitting a magical light from beyond, resplendent as the glittering
rhinestones that she understood to arrange so brilliantly in her marvellous jewelry designs...
Zoe Dewitt © 2019
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