Marianna Stuhr is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She also obtained the title of doctor of arts after doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She received several awards in graphic and painting competitions, and her works are in private and public collections, incl. at Fondazione Italo-Svedese in Venice, in the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow collection, the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the University of Connecticut.
Marianna Stuhr- paintings: text by Justyna Napiórkowska, PhD:
Marianna Stuhr creates abstract compositions in dialogue with the masters of the 20th and 21st centuries. At the exhibition, we will present the artist's latest paintings.
Painting is a form of meditation. Since Marianna Stuhr`s debut, her proceedings were distinguished by a very contemplative nature. Graphics and pictures were created slowly, maturing in their own rhythm.
The painting process itself is a constant resolution of artistic issues. Choosing a path in which the final shape of the painting is as much a work of talent, the result of deliberate decisions, but also a blessed chance.
The original inspiration for the last period in Marianna Stuhr's work was cosmic space. The artist enthusiastically studied scientific publications presenting issues in the field of astrophysics. The scientific discourse on space leaves plenty of room for the imagination. It goes beyond the standard way of describing the world. How to understand the expanding cosmos? How to understand the space in which the „multiverse "fits"?
A gaze up to the sky offers an ambiguous experience. On the one hand, the sky is like a dome that closes the world available to our senses. On the other hand, we know well that this dome is an illusion. Nothing limits the ever-expanding cosmic space. Where science reaches its limits, the inexhaustible mystery does not allow it to be literal. At the same time, the cosmos is an inexhaustible space for the imagination. Scientific discoveries or recordings from the Martian rover usually do not explain much immediately; on the other hand, they allow us to ask further questions. Science takes time and experience. Pending scientific explanation, the mystery needs to be interpreted. And so the painting becomes an attempt at understanding: presenting one's concept to the unknown. And the artist - confronted with scientific problems - becomes a model of the masters of the Renaissance: doctus. The secrets of the world inspire artists; they become curious researchers. In doing so, they are privileged. They develop a completely unscientific fascination with the beauty of this world. In total impunity.
This is what Marianna Stuhr's work is like, stubbornly and consistently following the paths of the experiment.
The artist created a series of paintings inspired by distant galaxies and the processes taking place there. After this creative "stay" in outer space and an attempt to unravel its secrets, she returned to the microcosm of the painterly palette. The issues of form and colour became an autonomous and demanding task. The painting is the space of the experiment. Professor Stefan Gierowski said so. Meditative experimentation with form allows for the performance of subsequent acts of creation on a canvas scale. It allows you to see what will come of it; he decides purely on painting issues: how to run the brush stroke? How do play the relationship between the colours? Finally, the most difficult of questions: where is the end of this process? At what point is the painting finished?
Art is born from art - this is what Cy Twombly, an American artist, whose work concealing metaphors and seemingly abstract works, though one of the inspirations for Marianna Stuhr. The creative search of Jan Tarasin - a painter who explored the issue of space in his work - revealing subsequent levels of cognition to the viewer was also important to her. In Marianna's personal, artistic pantheon, there is also Georgia O'Keefe, whose painting allusively refers to the sensuality of the body.
Time in front of the canvas or over a piece of paper is a specific ritual for Marianna Stuhr. It takes place internal silencing. In a state of concentration accompanied by music, such as jazz. Readings come back to mind - including the most important ones - Zbigniew Herbert's "Barbarian in the Garden" or Wilfred Thesiger's "Arabian Sands". The places and journeys discovered and described are the lens through which the most important journey into one's interior, sensitivity and the most personal painterly definition of the essence of art is best realized.
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