Anna Torma


Anna Torma is a Hungarian-Canadian fibre artist. Born in Tarnaörs, Hungary she immigrated to Canada in 1988. She specializes in large-scale hand embroideries, and her work draws upon multiple artistic and textile techniques, including appliqué, felting, photo transfer, collage, and quilting. She appropriates visual imagery from multiple sources, including anatomical drawings, folk art, and her children's drawings. She combines traditional methods of the Hungarian textile tradition with the radical reclamation of craft art forms from the avant-garde feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Life and career

Torma was born in 1952 in Tarnaörs, Hungary. She learned to embroider from her mother and grandmothers and studied textile art and design at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts. She emigrated to Canada in 1988. Torma was a 2007 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC.
Torma has exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe, and her work is held by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the New Brunswick Art Bank, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the New Brunswick Museum.

Recognition

In 2014 Torma received the Lieutenant-Governor's Award for High Achievement in the Visual Arts. She was the 2020 laureate of the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in the fine crafts.

Work