Exposition Art Blog: Teresa Pągowska

Teresa Pągowska

Teresa Pągowska (1926-2007) Polish painter, lecturer, professor of fine arts
"The works of Teresa Pagowska have gained a reputation as being an unusual phenomenon in Polish contemporary art. The artist looks primarily to her dreams for inspiration. As she herself admits, "My paintings reflect my struggle with what lies beyond our normal field of observation. I dream and I look. When I paint, I do not remember (luckily) the principles of art. I am constantly searching. (...) I am most deeply taken by the human figure - not only because of the wealth of its forms. I believe that the greatest magical content resides in humans. I do not limit the life of the figures that are born in my canvasses to a single instance. At times I have the impression that I grant them a freedom of action, interested in how they might behave in a situation that is new to them." Her paintings force us to reflect on the transience of life; she interprets the drama inherent in our fate, makes a special effort at exploring the essence of contemporaneity. Teresa Pagowska's paintings are distinguishable for the poetic imagination they embody, for their simplicity of form, and the artist's unusual sensitivity for color. They reflect emotions and psychological tensions, the existential dramas of contemporary humans. They stimulate the imagination, filled as they are with deformed yet highly sensual human figures (primarily female), coastal landscapes, animals, fruit, and objects of everyday use.








 Female figures are a recurring subject in Teresa Pagowska's paintings. The artist depicts these figures in a variety of situations, placing them in sketchily rendered interiors, depicting them in an emotional manner that often borders on the intimate. In one of her exhibition catalogues, Zbigniew Taranienko wrote, "The artist has for years been studying the female body, depicting to the fullest its sensuality, eroticism, beauty, and frailty - and through this an entire range of highly variegated experiences, from the simple to the complex, sometimes so complex and intermixed that it becomes impossible to identify them unequivocally. Pagowska's nudes, dynamic close-ups of the body, of vibrating, live matter, reveal the simplest of truths. They reflect emotions and psychological states and seem to transmit reactions. This new form of the nude allows us to discover the body and matter through density and flavor, dynamism and color."(http://culture.pl/en/event/teresa-pagowska-painting)







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