The work of Katarína Vavrová has a special and important place in the context of Slovak contemporary art. She appeared on the Slovak art scene in the early 1990s after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 1990, where she studied under Professors Albín Brunovský and Karol Ondreička in the Department of Book Illustration. She has remained faithful to her aptitude for figural depiction and developed it into a unique and inimitable graphic and painting form. The originality of her imaginative and poetic expression has attracted great interest abroad and she has received awards at several world-renowned exhibitions of bookplates, prints and paintings.
Katarína’s paintings are imbued with fertile imagination and her ability to combine real fragments of memories and experience with fascinating dreamlike figures of women and angels, animal and plant motifs, landscapes, architecture and ornaments. The amazing rhythm of her lines, and her delicate drawing softly embracing and characterizing faces and forms are enhanced by color – magically vibrant, rich, bold, soft, pulsating with unusual shades, halftones, configurations and highlights. The delicate calligraphy of lines and dramatic hatching, and impressive colors are set against a rich textural surface. She masterfully exploits beautiful relief lines of Japanese handmade paper and permeates them with structures, colors, shapes and stories. Everything is left unanswered and endowed with new meaning, and the viewers are asked to comprehend and decipher these expressive metaphors based on their own sensitivity.
Reverberating with imagination and allegory, Katarína Vavrová’s figurative paintings undoubtedly represent the peak of the imaginative and poetic line in Slovak contemporary art. Her dialogues on human alienation and reconciliation, on the emotional states of a soul swept up the whirl of struggles and doubts, are exceptional and unique.
Curator : PhDr. Danica Lovišková
Katarína Vavrová, akad. mal. was born in Bratislava.
1979 – 1983 Secondary School of Art in Bratislava - Department of Graphic Art
1984 – 1990 Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava - Department of Book Illustration (prof. Albín Brunovský and assistant Karol Ondreička)
1989 Accademia delle Belle Arti in Perugia, Italy (Scholarship).
