Exhibition – Ceija Stojka. Keeping Your Eyes Open
From February 27 to September 21, 2026.
Born in Austria into the Lovara Romani community, Ceija Stojka (1933–2013) was a self-taught artist—a writer, painter, and illustrator. A survivor of the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, where she lived from 1943 to 1945 at the age of 10 to 12, she was one of the first to bear witness to the Nazi genocide of the Roma, more than forty years after the events. She first published a book, *We Live in Hiding: Stories of a Romani Woman Through the Century*, in 1988. The following year, she began painting, an activity she continued until the final years of her life, creating approximately a thousand paintings and drawings over the course of 25 years.
Ceija Stojka is an artist who is now internationally renowned, associated with Art Brut, as well as an iconic figure representing the Romani people and their extermination during World War II.
The exhibition of 113 of his works at the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon is accompanied by the screening at the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation in Besançon of two documentaries about him directed by Karin Berger.
To learn more about this unique artist, whose life was shaped by World War II, check out the exhibition catalog, available for purchase at the gift shops of both museums or on the Fnac website.
Enjoy the read!
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