Artists Registry

Diana Kurz

New York NY United States

http://www.dianakurz.com
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Juno at the Firehouse( 9:14) .jpg

My Welsh Corgi Juno was a licensed therapy dog. For years we had been visiting nursing homes and troubled children, and she seemed to have healing power.
After 9/11, in thinking what I could do to best help and be of use, I brought her to my local firehouse, known as "Big Door" (Ladder 5 Engine 24, Battalion 2) 227 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village.  It was a very sad place at the time, especially because eleven men were lost from that firehouse.
From the time of our first visit I noticed how the men enjoyed seeing Juno and playing with her - one of them called her  “the wellness dog”. I realized that this was a way to bring some comfort and hopefully moments of joy and forgetfulness.  I took her there regularly.

This painting depicts one of the firemen and Juno. Also included are images of actual texts and memorial messages left at the firehouse. It took me many years before I could approach the subject (the painting was begun in 2009 and completed in 2011).

This painting was shown in the exhibition "9/11 - We Remember: Response and Healing" at Freyberger Gallery, Penn State Berks, PA.

Diana Kurz was born in Vienna, Austria and lives in Soho. She has been an exhibiting representational painter since the 1970s—her subject matter has included monumental figure paintings, landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and animal imagery, and an extensive series of works on the theme of the Holocaust.

Her art has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe, and is in many distinguished collections including The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Rose Art Museum; Wien Museum, Vienna; The Jewish Museum of Vienna; Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem; Bezirksmuseum Josefstadt, Vienna; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Rowan University, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Wash. DC and other public and private collections.

She received her B.A. from Brandeis University and M.F.A. from Columbia University

Kurz has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including, among others, a Fulbright Fellowship to France; American Center Residency in Paris; New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant; Austrian Federal Ministry of the Arts Artist-In-Residence in Vienna; Atlantic Center for the Arts and residencies at Yaddo and McDowell Colony. She has taught studio art at Queens College, Pratt Institute, Philadelphia College of Art, Cleveland Institute of Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Colorado, Boulder, and the Art Institute of Chicago.