Not only black and gold – the work of Anna Gulak

Luiza Poreda, 23 June 2020

Artistic biography of Anna Gulak is – beyond any doubt – impressive: participation in the Festival of Warsaw Art Colleges resulted in a scholarship in Milan; the artist is the first Polish woman who received an order from the Holy See to make a papal medal; she also won the prestigious Vatican Papal Academy Award (“Premio delle Pontificie Accademie”). You can also see her in a film portrait Italians love artists from the series Poles in Rome and the Vatican, realized in 2014 for TVP 2.

 

Impressione in Black and Gold VI, 2016 – one of Anna Gulak’s paintings auctioned at the art auction at the Art in House Auction House.

 

Anna Gulak exhibited her works in the Polish Parliament, the Gallery of the Palace of the President of the Republic of Poland, the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art; foreign audiences could admire her work, including in Vatican, Rome, Verona, Chicago, Toronto. Anna Gulak’s paintings, sculptures, graphics and drawings were included in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Vatican Museums; they were also bought by private collectors from around the world (Poland, France, Germany, Great Britain, USA, Canada, Italy, Arab Emirates, India).

Anna Gulak’s artworks cannot be reduced to one field: it includes sculpture, painting, drawing and design. Each of them is treated as an equivalent form of artistic expression, differing in the use of various formal tools. There is no place here for a Renaissance fight for the primacy of the fields of art – the artist’s works are strongly embedded in the present, blurring the boundaries between the painted image and the three-dimensional object, making us see them primarily as an artistic experience. At the same time, Anna Gulak is far from the concept of anti-art, recognizing the value of aesthetic form as an essential component of the work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Luce, 2019 and Paesaggio da sogno, 2002 are on offer from the Online Gallery of the Art in House Auction House.

 

Her relief paintings are characterized by the diversity of textures of individual fragments of the work, guiding the viewer’s eye over shiny or matte surfaces. The basic visual tool is the use in the composition of the contrast between gilding cut and a uniform background; gold elements sometimes go into three-dimensional, and, through convexity or concavity, lead a dynamic game with light. Although gilding may seem like a Byzantine element, determining the splendor of composition, the works of Anna Gulak tend rather towards minimalism. The nobility of the material does not interfere with the economy of the form, while the radicality of the contrast used is only apparent – the synthesis of the forms gives the effect of a sublime, well-thought-out arrangement. The artist’s work is not going to strike the viewer with flashy divisions, but rather to subject his eye to hypnosis, using light for this purpose.

You will see Anna Gulak’s works at our art auctions (New Generation Auctions for Collectors) and in the Online Art in House Gallery offer. We encourage you to watch them live in our space – they will then become a living structure, changing with each step of the viewer. Do you dare to come closer?