DESIGNER:  Born in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on January 29, 1901, to a Jewish family.  Her father, Maurice Anhalzer was a native of Slovakia, a businessman dealing in glass, ceramics and fine porcelain, so they were well-off.  She was the oldest of four children, the others were all boys.  Ever since she was a little girl, she had artistic inclinations and had a strong  personality: at four years of age she categorically stated that she wanted to be a painter.

In 1906 the family moved to the industrial town of Gyor. Olga had a governess who taught her German.  Later, she attended elementary school and started to collect  handicrafts, after finding a piece of folk art in the form of a shell with a rose.  She showed it to her parents and told them that she liked this shell very much.  This was the first contact she had with folk art and thereafter she made up her mind that she would seek and collect all things that seemed odd.  She soon had a vast amount stored in the display cabinet in her room.

At 16 years of age she was accepted as a private student at the Benedictine Gymnasium [High school], where all the students were novices of that Catholic order, including the person who supervised her studies.  At the end of the year she successfully took and passed the Latin, Mathematics and Geometry exams.

In 1919, after World War I, she worked with Professor Vally Wieseltier in Vienna, as designer in ceramics of the Wiener Werkstatte factory, and at the same time she was doing illustrations for the social-democratic newspaper “Nepszava” in Budapest, as well as for the German translations of some of the works of Emile Zola.  In 1920 she was an artist for the “Arbeiter Zeitung” [Workers’ Newspaper] in Vienna and met Kunfi Zsigmondy, an important personality in Hungarian history.  That was the year her father died, and with part of the inheritance she had received she moved to Dusseldorf in the old Weimar Republic, studying painting at the Kunstakademie [ Academy of Art] where she met and married Jupp Rubsam, a sculptor.

She then started a new stage in her life, painting and drawing intensively.  She also accompanied  her husband to all his projects, especially the design and building of a monumental piece of work eulogizing the war, which, when it was inaugurated in 1927 was harshly criticized by General Ludendorff, the right-hand man of Chancellor Hindenburg, because it glorified peace.

Around 1930 she separated and divorced her husband, but they continued to be friends.  In 1932 she married her second husband, Bela Fisch, an overseas sales organizer for an Italian-Yugoslavian cement factory.

From 1933 to 1934 they lived in Morocco and for some time she was able to travel to the interior of that exotic country, where she started her first collection of folk art and handicrafts.

In 1934 they returned to Germany, but found that it had changed due to the Nazi terror and domination.  On the streets, in hotels and restaurants there were signs that read:  “Dogs and Jews: do not enter”. [note that the Fisch's were Jews]  So, they traveled to Gyor, where her husband was able to secure a job in Brazil.

In 1935 Olga traveled on the Graf Zeppelin dirigible to Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro, where she met up with her husband.  She painted folkloric figures, just like she had done in Morocco, and bought handicrafts.

In 1937 they returned to Gyor, where only her three brothers were still living, because both her mother and grandmother had died.  After that they went to Italy and in Palermo they boarded a ship to Eritrea, where they lived for a year. Bela Fisch was working and Olga was painting.  “I always liked primitive, simple, and what they call underdeveloped people”. And when their contract expired in 1938 they decided to travel to Paris and from there to New York, trying to get U.S. citizenship, but that was not possible because the quota for Hungarian immigrants had been filled.  [Actually, Olga and Bela had obtained their residency card, and when Bela’s brother Geza, and his family wanted to come to New York, Geza was not allowed emigrate to the US, but his wife and two children, all born in Vienna, were allowed to come into the country].  Olga held an exhibit of her paintings from Eritrea and she was contacted by Vogue magazine and its director, Conde Nash.

One day they met Arthur Fried, who invited them to travel to Quito, where he was living.  Olga and Bela convinced his brother, Dr. Geza Fisch, his wife and two children to obtain visas from the Ecuadorian Consul in Geneva.

After a trip without incidence on board the “Orduna” they arrived at the port of La Libertad in June [1939] and continued to Quito by train.  Shortly after that Bela opened a factory and Olga was hired as a professor at the Escuela de Bellas Artes [ School of Fine Arts] by its Director Pedro Leon Donoso, making 250 Sucres per month.  She  made friends with teachers and students and was soon well known in the artistic community of the city.  Through her personal contacts she got involved in Ecuadorian folklore and designing, and she had the idea of establishing a store where she could sell and buy typical objects and folk art of the country, but they did not have the seed capital to do this.  Naturally, she had started collecting archeological, folk art and native art objects which are now part of her permanent collection, the third one of her life, because the two earlier ones, from Hungary Morocco and Eritrea were lost in Gyor, during the fateful time after World War II, and the one from Brazil, which sank on a ship en route to Europe.

Olga herself, in her memoirs, writes about how she was able to establish her store.  “Little by little, our house was arousing interest for the collection we were accumulating.  One day, a man asked if he could call on us.  He introduced himself as Lincoln Kirstein.  ‘I am the Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  I’ve heard that you have a little collection and  would like to see it’.  Among the things Kirstein noticed was a small rug, lying on the ‘estera’  [straw mat] which I had designed and had woven in Guano [a town in Ecuador].  Upon learning that the rug was of my doing, he asked, ‘Would you like to make one for the Museum of Modern Art?’”  We reached a price of three hundred Dollars for a rug that measured 2.75 meters by 3.65 meters.  The man paid, and that is the money we used to open the “Folklore” store on Tarqui Street.” [direct quotes from the English version of her book]

Bela was the manager and Olga was the designer.  She also showed and sold her paintings and since she was a real polyglot, fluent in speaking Hungarian, German, French, English, Spanish and Italian, her store attracted many foreign customers.  It is a great shame that she never learned to speak Quichua,  [the Ecuadorian version of the Quechua language]since she would have been able to communicate more easily with the indigenous people.

We should note that since their arrival in Quito, Olga had been inspired by typical Ecuadorian motifs for her designs, which therefore are really unique.  Also, she was wise enough not to influence the designs of the various indigenous towns and communities that she was visiting and which she had come to know, by respecting what they had created.

Her early artistic and business success was due to the beauty of her rugs, since she was using the talented weavers from Guano, but she made them change their loose, traditional knotting technique for a strong and dense Persian knot, and was able to make items that competed successfully in the world market, to such a point that she decided that the time had come to establish her own shop next to her home and store, thus being able to fill larger orders from abroad.  This included five large rugs measuring 28 x 30 feet each, which are in the beautiful halls of the elegant United Nations building in New York.

The artistic liberties she took in her rugs seemed extravagant to the taste of the “Quitenos” [people from Quito] in the forties, who were used to floral pseudo-academic designs, which had been used for many years, without having any original artistic background.

Her creativity opened new markets, and in 1950 she was invited by the Schumacher Company of Interior Designs, who wanted to have the exclusive sale of her rugs.  They organized press conferences; there was a publicity campaign on television, a real novelty at the time, and the New York Times published long articles about her.

In 1951[1953] she traveled to the Galapagos Islands with a group of 30 other members of the expedition.  She was filled with wonder on this trip, although there were some dangerous moments, and it was quite uncomfortable.  Afterwards, she traveled to the San Blas islands in Panama, where the Cuna Indians lived, who made heir beautiful “Mola” tapestries.

She also traveled around the country.  In Otavalo she bought her first “faja” [woven belt] and the first embroidered blouse, which was the first of many she sold in her store.  She designed several variations of these, fabrics mostly, which were woven by Julian Muenala, ad made dresses using the thinner fabrics and ponchos, jackets and vests of the thicker material.  She held fashion shows in the Sucre Theater with the young ladies of the high society as models.  Thus, Folklore was growing rapidly until it was necessary to move to a beautiful big building on 6 de Diciembre Avenue, where she planted the beautiful trees that still adorn that area.  Her name was now famous, and her art was greatly respected.

In the 60’s the rug shop was an international success, but she had to find suppliers for the other items.

She had undertaken several trips to the mountains and jungles of the Amazon, Santo Domingo de los Colorados, Shell Mera and Puyo with Rolf Blomberg and Hans and Gi Neustadter.  Whatever attracted her, she painted.  In Esmeraldas she had bought beautiful archeological items from the La Tolita culture.  Thus, her fame grew outside the boundaries of our country.  The Smithsonian Museum exhibited her collection “A Feast of Color, Corpus Christi Dance Costumes of Ecuador”, showing the costumes, instruments and masks of the dancers of the popular Ecuadorian fiesta La Octava de Corpus which is held on June 24 of each year.  This celebration originally  grew from the annual celebration of the Indians during their harvest or “Inti Raimi”, which occurs during the Summer Solstice.

Her husband, Bela Fisch, died in 1958, at a relatively young age.  In 1962, she and several of her friends established the Instituto Ecuatoriano del Folklore [Ecuadorian Folklore Institute] under the direction of her neighbor Paulo de Carvalho Neto, which  began a series of research projects and published an interesting scientific magazine.

Together with Carvalho and other artists and scholars, they traveled to Lican and Sicalpa on the Chimborazo Mountain during Holy Week, but the natives thought they were all Cubans, so they had to flee.  On another occasion, she traveled to Calderon in the province of Imbabura for the Day of the Dead,  and was fascinated by the little figurines made out of bread dough, so she suggested that they make them all year round, and she would sell them in her store.  Thus a very prosperous industry was born in that town.  Today, the Calderon figurines are exhibited and sold throughout the country, and even around the world, conserving the original motifs, but enriched with new models.

Around that time [former President and Secretary General of the Organization of American States] Galo Plaza invited her to his farm in Zuleta, where he had organized a shop with a group of young embroiderers.  Olga taught them how to make table cloths and place mats embroidered with traditional designs, adding a little fringe that was a popular feature in Central Europe.  Today there is still a prosperous cooperative in Zuleta, which offers job to many of the peasants.

She had a similar experience with the Salasaca community after an exhibit of Folk Art which was organized in Quito by Luisa Gomez de la Torre.  The Dutch painter Jean Schroeder gave them a design which they adopted and wove, and now their folk art items are very popular and the Salasaca designs are world renownrd.

She also had unexpected experiences with the native painters from Tigua and Zumbahua in the Province of Cotopaxi. These artists always used to paint on sheep’s leather in primitive styles, using allegorical compositions from local motifs.  Olga was about to hold an exhibition for the Smithsonian Institute, and convinced them to make larger paintings on wood, leather or canvas, teaching them some of her own techniques.  Thus she was able to convince Julio Toaquiza and others to go fully into this art form.  Today their paintings are widely known and are being sold in Quito as naif or primitive art.

Aside from this kind of promotion of the local crafts both at the national and foreign market levels, Olga is recognized for encouraging the improvement of the quality and beauty of the items sold in her store.  Her jackets are made from ponchos from Natabuela or Riobamba, where many of the weavers provide her with these garments, making it possible for them to earn an honest living.  In the mountains of Cayambe the Indian “Lucho” weaves his wall hangings with other members of his family.  She also has close connections with the Indian women of Sarayacu, marketing their ceramics, which are beautifully primitive.  The husbands of these women, feeling that they were being left behind,  in the 70’s started a balsa wood shop under the direction of the American Joe Brenner,  making models of woodpeckers, macaws and toucans with their long beaks, as well as other birds, which have become stylized items of folk art of the Oriente [Eastern] region.

In June 1983 she was invited to travel to Cuenca to the Centro Interamericano de Artesania y Artes Populares CIDAP [ Inter-American Center of Handicrafts and Folk Arts].  She visited traditional handicraft sites such as Chordeleg where  primitive jewelry and ceramics are made,  Gualacea where they weave ikat; and all around Cuenca, the provenance of beautiful toquilla straw hats of different shapes and colors, looking for new things.

In Cuenca she was encouraged to write and publish her memoir in English and Spanish, which was published in 1985 with beautiful photographs both in black and white and color, under the fascinating title of “El Folklore que yo vivi, Memorias de Olga Fisch” “The Folklore through my Eyes—Memoir of Olga Fisch” which is 237 pages long.

In 1987, fulfilling a long awaited dream, she returned to Hungary for the last time.  She stayed with the few relatives that were still in Gyor, -- most of her family is now living in Quito.  We should note that her youngest brother  [Tiby—not Pablo] died during World War II, probably exterminated by the Nazis.  His widow now lives in Australia.

She was living placidly in her home, which was also her store.  She was about to turn ninety years of age in another month.  Her memory was beginning to fail, although she still was having great ideas.  Her body had shrunk, but the beautiful features of her face still showed the liveliness which had always been her distinguished feature.  Her hair was now white, but her blue-green eyes still looked around with love, because throughout her life she was always discovering beauty with that lively look and her bright laughter.

She continued loving everything about folklore, which is the heart and soul of the local communities.  Her effect on our country has been  tremendous.  Through her designs, the original Pre-Colombian art was kept alive;  her archeological collections and  the artistic expressions of today’s Indians and mestizos, who did not have formal training—keep living on.

On the other hand, her refined sense of European esthetics, together with the native folk soul of the Ecuadorians, she has attained a happy and harmonious coexistence.

Her work, which is now shown around the world capitals, emphasizes the art and handicrafts of Ecuador.  Before her time, there had been many who considered anything that was folkloric to be vulgar.  We should not forget that thanks to her store and workshop many Ecuadorians have stable jobs, the communities and towns are motivated to keep folk art and crafts alive.  Through her creative efforts and business sense, Ecuadorian folklore has become revitalized and occupies a prominent position among our national exports.

On the afternoon that I visited her, she was an excellent hostess, giving me a copy of her autobiography, even though her secretary did make a face, but did not object.

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Francisco Febres Cordero interviewed Olga in 1985 , at which time she told him the story of one of her early travels on mule back, when she first started to roam around the country.  The mule stopped suddenly and the muleteer who accompanied her yelled: “Carajo, mula”[expletive mule] and the mule started off again.  Olga added:  “many times I have yelled “carajo mula” and the mule would start walking again.  I can’t believe it….

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Translated by Eva Fisch Desrosiers.  The items in brackets are corrections made by the translator, daughter of Dr. Geza Fisch, who witnessed some of these events.