Klemmné Németh Zsuzsa szerk.: Gorka Kerámiamúzeum, Verőce (PMMI kiadványai - Kiállítási katalógusok 10. Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága)

GORKA LÍVIA was born in Nógrádverőce in 1925. From the early childhood, she felt, perceived and stored the lively, loving and spiritually rich atmosphere of the father-house. "I was born into a way of living that was in constant motion: into a way of thinking that always searched for connections, which was a profession but most of all a way of living." - she wrote in the catalogue titled Three Generations published in 1994. However, it was not self-evident at all that the world-famous ceramist's daughter would choose the same career as her father. She passed the potter's exam in 1947 in secret, without her father's knowledge. From that time on, they worked together in the workshop of Verőce for years. "However, there came the time when I felt I would become a mere epigone of him ... I have got to this point, now go on - my father said farewell to me" - she wrote in her memories. Lívia Gorka began to work on her own in her studio in Gülbaba Street in Budapest from 1960 on. She was detemiined on realizing her plans. Besides the father's artistic heritage - whose most important part was the consistent attitude to the world and nature, the dilemma of divisible and indivisible - journeys, new connections with foreign artists and recognition of the ceramics of great ancient cultures meant the basis of her particular unparalleled life-work. Though she was excellent in throwing on the wheel, she chose the method of handbuilding at that time. "Instead of the law of the potter's wheel, my hands competed or struggled and made peace with clay ... Differences of physical condition, the memories of previous experiments, die state of being immersed in work gave me a chance to express with a small finite gesture all the experience and knowledge accumulated in me." Though from the beginning of her career she produced saleable objects for craft shops for a long time, even those objects were of "beauty and value", according to Máté Major. From the 1960s on, not only the forms of her objects but also their material and glaze began to differ from the ones people had got accustomed to.