Breaking away from the tradition of a psychological art all too deeply imbued with expressionism, Soshana has produced a series of explosively coloured still-life paintings of a flamboyant construction bristling with sharp points. Her dried flowers with stalks resembling dead men's bones are even more evocative than her burned wastelands with gibbets starkly jutting up into lowering skies of doom. It is remarkable how the artist struggles to strip away all incidentals, to distil the essence of her subject matter. As a consequence her subjects tend to loose their physical identity, yet her message normally comes through – in her distinctive stroke, her graphic design, her range of colours, reflecting the innermost soul of her works and unlocking their secret.
Once she had found her new approach Soshana was bound to continue. She has crossed the Rubicon. While her chromatic register has not changed and her draughtsmanship has retained its vibrant dynamism, its restless mobility, she has – little by little – embroiled her images. Her charred sheaves of corn, her burning bushes redolent with the pungent smell of death and destruction have given way to billows of pure colour enhancing surface textures and transmuting them into volcanic eruptions.
The shapes emerging from these turbulent eddies are themselves chaotic. But the disorder is only apparent: all movements are in fact orchestrated by an inherent guiding pattern that produces a global impact.
And then the romanticism and automatism of this lyrical period are succeeded by a more intellectual style. On encased scrolls of paper or silk Soshana traces scholarly arabesques of Chinese inspiration. Her art has turned into calligraphy: it is no longer an inspiration by reality manifesting itself through our knowledge and perception, but a rare, precious script traducing ideas by lines symbolising their objective content.
Waldemar George, Paris 1955, art journalist