Ewa Kuryluk

Ewa Kuryluk (born 5 May 1946) is a Polish artist.

She is a pioneer of textile installation, painter, photographer, art historian, novelist and poet, and the author of numerous books, written in Polish and English, many of which have been translated into other languages.

She has had over fifty solo exhibitions, participated in many group shows and created outdoor installations throughout the world.

Her work can be seen in the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Poznań, as well as in public and private collections in Europe, USA, Latin America and Japan.

Ewa Kuryluk was born in Kraków, Poland, the first child of Karol Kuryluk, editor of the “Odrodzenie” magazine, and Maria Kuryluk (born Miriam Kohany), writer and amateur pianist.

In 1947 the family moved to Warsaw and in 1950 Ewa's brother Piotr was born.

In 1959, her father was appointed ambassador to Austria and they moved to Vienna.

In 1964, the artist finished Austrian secondary school and commenced her studies at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, obtaining her Diploma in painting and M.A. in Art History in 1970.

On 9 December 1967 her father died suddenly of a heart attack, and in March 1968 the family was further unsettled by the outbreak of anti-Semitism and the emigration of friends, with her brother showing the first signs of mental illness.

Kuryluk's distinct style of painting and her rebellious nature brought her in conflict with her professors.

In 1967 she was granted permission to organize an independent show of student work, including her own, in the staircase of the painting department.

The unusual event drew crowds and was reported in the press.

However the authorities did not like the stir and she was forbidden to continue.

Kuryluk began to export her work clandestinely and to exhibit abroad.

Her first solo show at the Woodstock Gallery in London coincided with her final exams in Warsaw, and she kept it secret.

By 1968 she found her own style and iconography with “Human Landscapes”, a series of grotesque paintings in uniform, vivid colors, described by the art historian Mieczyslaw Porebski in the following way: “In her pictures astonishing spaces open up or transform into mazes.

Corridors branch out, tunnels cross, city blocks grow into each other, skyscrapers buzz with the hectic business of modern life—bringing to mind a contemporary Tower of Babel, greedy and restless as an anthill”.

In her next series “Screens”, she contrasted TV screens with people watching it.

In the late 1970s she and her friends, the painters Andrzej Bieńkowski, Andrzej Bielawski and Łukasz Korolkiewicz formed a group with the ironic name “Cream”.

In 1974 she moved on to photorealism, painting portraits and self-portraits after her own photographs.

Figures were removed from their surroundings and set against flat abstract backgrounds, suggestive of a wall or open space with small silhouettes and vignettes sporting around.

These paintings convey solitude, but they are also peppered with sarcasm, charade and allegory.

A tiny king Oedipus, for instance, cut from a reproduction of “Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and painted yellow, is standing on the shoulder of Leszek Kołakowski as if addressing a question to the Polish philosopher.

In 1976, the Year of the Political Prisoner, she donated work to Amnesty International.

The self-portrait “Outlining my shadow” (1978, National Museum, Poznań) refers to the legendary Corinthian maid who has become the first painter by outlining the profile of her departing lover in the light of the lamp.

Shortly after finishing this symbolic self-portrait Kuryluk suffered a crisis.

Her sense of color undermined, she abandoned painting on stretched canvas and left England.

A temporary teaching job at the Film School in Łódź, then a textile center, made her discover the flexibility of fabric.

Taking advantage of some liberalization under Edward Gierek, she organized an independent international art exhibition, “The Garden of Knowledge” in June 1981, hoping to turn it into a biennial event.

The opening of her first solo show in the United States on 12 December 1981 coincided with the imposition of martial law in Poland.

In February 1982, with the aid of a small European Program Exchange grant sponsored by George Soros, she came to the Institute for the Humanities at New York University.

Founded by Richard Sennett, the Institute counted Susan Sontag, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, and the novelist Edmund White among its members.

Appointed a Fellow, she conducted a seminar on shadows, mirrors and doubles in art and literature in 1982 and 1983.

She also switched to writing in English and recounted her ludicrous fights with Polish censorship in “Who’s afraid of the little red mouse?” published in The Village Voice.

In March 1984 her first New York solo installation opened at Art in General and she kept exhibiting with the non-for-profit gallery until 1989.

She taught at New School for Social Research, New York University and University of California, San Diego.

In 1985 she was honored for her activity on behalf of free speech and human rights by the New York Fund for Free Expression.

In July 1989, after a compromise had been reached between the Polish regime and Solidarity, she visited with her family in Warsaw, renewed contact with her fellow artists and soon resumed her professional activities.

1992 she founded the association Amici di Tworki to support patients at the huge mental hospital near Warsaw.

In 2012 she was awarded the Gloria Artis for merit to Polish culture.