Grove

Record: Ewa Juszkiewicz is currently the highest-selling contemporary Polish female artist. Her painting Portrait of a Lady (After Louis Leopold Boilly) from 2019 achieved nearly €1.4 million at Christie’s in New York in 2022.

The work of Ewa Juszkiewicz is based on reworking historical models and questioning the objectivity of female representation in art history. The artist opposes the conventions and rigid schematization to which images of mothers, wives, and daughters were subjected over the centuries, seeking to grant them a new, authentic individuality. She creates surreal versions of her prototypes by removing their most important element – the face – along with the hairstyle and makeup, which are in fact only a costume, a mask.

Created in 2014, Grove is an example of the artist’s mastery in rendering complex plant structures. Unlike many of her other works, rich in clothing detail, here the figure’s torso is almost invisible. The woman wears a plain garment that merges with the background. This minimalist gesture directs attention to the lush vegetation concealing her identity.

Juszkiewicz proposes a fantastical alternative to the decorum of the period and its social conventions in the form of faceless portraits. She creates a new art history from the perspective of a female artist.