— Teresa Pągowska
Watch Filip Pagowski, the artist’s son, discuss the exhibition
The motif of the shadow weaves through the exhibition. In Pągowska’s pictorial universe, it functions as both a formal and conceptual thread, encompassing dualities of light and dark, presence and absence, while reflecting the artist’s underlying fascination with mystery. Hinging the body to its environment, shadows exist within, and simultaneously defy the material world. By tracing their elusive forms with paint, Pągowska reveals the secret or fantasised parts of the self: our fears, desires or impulses. In the artist’s own words, ‘each painting depicts an experience and materialises a dream’.
When I am not painting, I feel like a car without a driver;
I’m getting rusty.
A painting may arise from a dream.
The most important dreams cannot be revealed; it is to me that they present themselves.
They will leave their marks on paintings.
I dream. I look. I see.
When engaged in painting, I am no longer aware of the rules of art.
I’m searching and exploring.
In the process my worlds come into being.
Without passion I cease to exist.
I ask my pictures thousands of questions.
Answers to these questions have to be found within myself.
— Teresa Pągowska, 2001
Monochromat XXXXC (Monochrome XXXXC), 1975
Acrylic and tempera on canvas
120 x 130 cm (47.24 x 51.18 in)
Plaża w deszczu, z cyklu Figury magiczne (Beach in the rain, from the series: Magic Figures), 1978
Acrylic on canvas
166 x 131 cm (65.35 x 51.57 in)
Starak Collection
Tempera and acrylic on canvas
150 x 130 cm (59 x 51.18 in)
Acrylic on canvas
150 x 140 cm (59.06 x 55.12 in)
By Pągowska’s own admission, Niebieskie mewy (Blue Seagulls, 2006) represents a moment of compositional innovation whereby she realised she could represent an entire landscape with one single band of white paint in negative space. ‘I suddenly thought: take a can of white emulsion paint, which is the thick one, and the biggest paintbrush,’ she said. ‘I put the painting on the floor and I made the whiteness with that paint and inserted those blue forms in the white paint.’ Here, Pągowska explores negative space further, playfully inverting the colour of the masked figure’s foot as it dips into the sky.
Niebieskie mewy (Blue seagulls), 2006
Acrylic on canvas
130 x 140 cm (51.18 x 55.12 in)
Painting for me is not a game, but more of a drama — a fundamental and eternal drama of life, of human existence. Form, colour and contrast are for me the language through which I express myself the best. The starting point of my painting is always linked to an inner experience and its relationship to phenomena of reality.
— Teresa Pągowska
During the 1990s, Pągowska’s paintings became populated with animal presences. Biała z psami (White with dogs, 1997) depicts a boldly abstracted human form flanked by a cat-like figure on the left and a sleeping dog on the right. Thick strokes of black and white paint define the figure’s volume and suggest movement – a bent leg, pointed foot and arched back – while more delicate, linear contours define the outlines of the two accompanying animals.
Biała z psami (White with dogs), 1997
Acrylic on canvas
145 x 130 cm (57.09 x 51.18 in)
Autoportret nastroju (Self-portrait of a mood), 2000
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 60 cm (11.81 x 23.62 in)
Acrylic and tempera on canvas
140 x 130 cm (55.12 x 51.18 in)
In Horyzonty (Horizons, 2002), a female figure painted in bright orange stands in the centre of the composition. Her body is rendered in Pągowska’s signature style, reduced to only the most essential of elements that suggest, rather than depict the body. Strokes of magenta pigment, some broad and some fine, run horizontally across the picture plane and bleed into the raw linen surface. These bands obscure the figure’s face and areas of her body, creating a sense of mystery, as if the viewer gazes voyeuristically through window blinds.
Horyzonty (Horizons), 2002
Acrylic on canvas
140 x 130 cm (55.12 x 51.18 in)
Acrylic on canvas
160 x 150 cm (62.99 x 59.06 in)
The exhibition features a selection of works on paper – gouaches, inks, charcoals and collages – that offer insight into Pągowska’s intricate artistic process. She collected and repurposed found, everyday materials including magazines and wrapping papers, drawn to their irregular and tactile surfaces. ‘I have a taste for errors and mistakes, which when skillfully accumulated, may acquire their special power,’ she said, ‘they give the picture its character.’ The collages on view incorporate the stencils and paper cutouts that she used to create the striking silhouetted outlines in many of her paintings. Like other artists of her generation, particularly the Pop artists whom she admired – Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Tom Wesselmann – Pągowska borrowed techniques from commercial printing, redefining its language for her own dreamlike and intimate vision.
Teresa Pągowska was born in Warsaw in 1926. She studied painting under the Colourist Wacław Taranczewski at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznán, graduating in 1951. In 1950 she moved to Sopot and became affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where she taught for over a decade. She participated in All-Poland Exhibition of Young Art. Against the War—Against Fascism, the landmark show held at Warsaw’s Arsenal in 1955, and the First Paris Biennale at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1959. In 1961, she was selected for the show Fifteen Polish Painters at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Pągowska moved to Warsaw in 1964, where she developed her signature semi-abstract style focused on a sensorial exploration of the female figure. From the 1970s, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and began painting her renowned Monochromes and Magic Figures series.
