Eva Helene Pade

Art history stands as a point of departure for Danish-born, Paris-based artist Eva Helene Pade. Her paintings draw upon a lineage of Northern European figurative artists, including Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Otto Dix in her investigation of the complexities of human relationships.

In her compositions, dreamlike, open-ended narratives are fused with a sense of the mythological. Described by Pade as a ‘surrender to the more metaphysical parts of the paintings,’ her work pushes beyond the figurative towards the transcendental as she proposes a new painterly approach to depicting female embodiment today. 

Represented as a site of empowered agency, the female body is central to her practice. Starting as ‘coordinates’ on the canvas, her figures emerge from layer upon layer of paint into clusters and crowds, or are singled out from these configurations in meditative depictions of individuals. Their faces stare out defiantly from the canvases, materialising from fluid compositions or dissolving into rich, jewel-toned strokes of paint. Full-length, interlocking figures dominate indeterminate sites, often appearing not only expressionless but featureless or entirely covered – emotion conveyed through their stance or contortion. Limbs connect or multiply with resonating blurred edges and areas of the cotton canvas are left exposed, inviting myriad readings. These forms extend a sense of the self beyond the body and open up spaces with which she ‘allows for the connections we all have. Where you have the sacrifice, dreams and hopes.’

Eva Helene Pade received her BFA and MFA from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2024. Early recognition for her work includes the prestigious Young Talent Prize from the Carlsberg Foundation in 2017. Since then, she has exhibited her work both in solo and group shows across Europe and the United States, and has participated in significant curatorial projects including Uno, Nessuno, Centomila at Palazzo Capris, Turin (2021) and Forårsudstillingen at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2021). In April 2025 ARKEN Museum [of Contemporary Art], Ishøj, Denmark, will stage the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, curated by Rasmus Stenbakken.