10 things you don’t know about Ewa Juszkiewicz

1.    She was born in Gdańsk, where she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in the years 2004-2009. She attained a diploma in painting under the supervision of professor Maciej Świeszewski. She obtained her doctorate at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts in 2013. 

2.    In her early works, she touched upon the problem of being different. She commented on her works: “The objects of my research are images that are different, bizarre, imperfect, deviating from the norm, often not approved of by the social discourse. Radical figures, usually marginalized, physical pathologies. Embarrassing and hidden social issues, occurrences of sex-transfers, fluid personality. Dressing up and pretending to be someone else. The themes of masks, mascaraed, and grotesque. 

3.    In 2013, she was awarded the Grand Prix at the 41st Biennal of Painting Bielska Jesień 2013. Anna Nawrot, one of the contest's jurors, summed up Juszkiewicz's work: “Ewa Juszkiewicz paints monumental figures, which appear to be from museum collections, though the figures in the portraits don't look our way. They have no eyes. Instead, there is a monstrous fungus or carefully pinned up draperies. The meeting of the two contrasting worlds – figure and head/non-head – results in creating a figure gallery based on her own rules. There is something incredibly intriguing and majestic in them. a return to the sources with a rather simultaneously visual and painting surprising effect." As a result, the Juszkiewicz name figures among the top of the Kompas Nowej Sztuki ranking. 

4.    In 2014, Ewa Juszkiewicz was included in the UK published “100 Painters of Tomorrow" book.

5.    In 2019, the opinion-forming newspaper “New York Times" named Ewa Juszkiewicz, an outstanding painter at the Frieze fair in New York. It read, " From Poland come three painters exemplifying postwar and contemporary Surrealism, among them the young Ewa Juszkiewicz, who repaints classic portraits of women but hides their faces with cloth, ears of corn or a backward French braid. They evoke feminism, dream logic and implicit violence." Following in New York Times's footsteps, the American “Galerie Magazine" included Juszkiewicz among its 9 exceptional artists. 

6.    An individual exhibition at the prestigious American Gagosian Gallery in 2020 was the beginning of Juszkiewicz's international career. During the exhibition, the artist's works could be viewed 24 hours a day on Gagosian Park's façade. 

7.    Ewa Juszkiewicz was invited to participate in a collective exhibition – “Arcimboldo Face to Face" at the Centre Pompidou Metz in France. 130 artists from around the world participated in the exhibition. The exhibition is open for visitors to see until the 22nd of November, 2021. 

8.    At the "Polish Contemporary Art. The New Generation after 1989" auction that took place on the 8th of June 2021 at DESA Unicum, Ewa Juszkiewicz's painting was bought for nearly PLN 400,000 (PLN 396,000). It was the highest sold artist's work in Poland, and its price was four times higher than the lowest estimate. 

9.    On the 14th of October 2021, during a prestigious Contemporary Art Evening Auction at Sotheby's, a record was set for Ewa Juszkiewicz's work.  The “Maria (After Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck)" painting from 2013 was sold for GBP 352,800, although the estimate was only GBP 30,000-40,000. Juszkiewicz's work reached a sum over ten times higher than expected, resulting in an impressive result of almost PLN 2,000,000. 

10.    On the 16th of October 2021, Juszkiewicz broke another record at the Christie's auction, where the price of her 2014 “Grove" painting skyrocketed to GBP 437,000 (PLN 2,384,375) from an estimate of GBP 25,000-35,000.