March 20 - May 2, 2010
The Władysław Hasior Gallery
ul. Jagiellońska 18 b, Zakopane
Ewa Fortuna's works are small, subtle, atmospheric and inspired by nature. This retrospective exhibition celebrates 40 years of Ewa Fortuna's artistic work, which includes tapestries, pastel drawings and collages.
Ewa Fortuna was born in Zakopane and graduated in Professor Leszek Wajda's studio at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. She has been a member of the Zakopane branch of Poland's National Society of Artists since 1971 and has had her works displayed at more than 80 exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
Ewa Fortuna's early tapestries were downy, whirring, red - large artistic windows that hung easily on the wall. Not only are they pleasant to the eye, but they also tempt us to touch and stroke them and enter the soft and delicate world of welcoming mystery. These works invite us to escape all the sharp edges, dissonances and the over-demanding pace of our everyday lives.
The artist's next period dealt with shrinking the doors to an Arcadian paradise. Her works became so small that, instead of being hung on the wall, they could be carried in a pocket. When everything around becomes unbearable, such handy works can be taken out to be admired and to provide a brief yet pleasant period of respite before returning to the humdrum.
Her works have also changed their form; at the outset, dry leaves, flowers, blades of grass, coloured petals appeared on small pastel Tatra mountain landscapes. These elements evoke antique flower-presses and the scrap-book albums of our great-grandmothers who glued withered souvenirs from beloved ones. With time, the mountain backgrounds disappeared and Ewa began to look at the world in more detail and closer at hand. Here she discovered goodness in the world that she considers worth retaining.
Dried leaves, frayed lace saved by the artist, do not speak about leaving, time passing or about autumn - they are SET IN TIME, they talk about duration. Cheerful, seasoned sometimes with a dash of melancholy, Ewa Fortuna's landscapes are not only images of her view of the world, but also a record of her feelings towards it. Her works are also a reflection of her belief in a sense of beauty and eternal harmony, which are so difficult to notice in our everyday lives that can at times seem so unbearable.
Wawrzyniec Brzozowski
Krakow, March 2010
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Plant Landscape I
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Plant Landscape II
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Plant Landscape III
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Mount Kopieniec
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Pastel
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Tatra Landscape
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