About Me

Alexandra Sztemberszka’s artistic work is located at the interface of painting and sculpture. At first glance, her works appear to be images of colourful ornaments or arabesques, made by the precise arrangement of dots and fine lines. But on closer inspection, the picture, which is arranged in multi-layered layers, offers various forms of bodies, patterns, and geometries in which Sztemberszka’s Duktus plays the main role in her figurative and color-intensive art.

The Ukrainian-born artist with Hungarian roots was inspired by Mark Rothko’s colour palette and the attractive luminosity of his works right from the start. Thus she tries in her own way, albeit rather with the expression of a neo-impressionist application of paint, to give her pictures that depth and complexity that inspire and advance her work. For Sztemberszka, color is an essential component of her artistic work. Not only because it is her first material in the form of oil and acrylic, but also because it is the confrontation with the medium of color that is the source of her inspiration and art form. Thus the exploration of the right and suitable colour combinations is the beginning of all beginnings. On countless sketches and sheets full of colour samples, she begins to give the picture, which is created in front of the inner eye, a form along the composition, in order to then transfer it to the canvas. Sztemberszka’s sketch-like work can last several days and weeks, only to be refined into an image in seemingly impulsive drawings.

When a picture is created, it is unmistakably evident that Sztemberszka’s creative style, coupled with influences from Op-Art and in particular the influence of Victor Vasarely’s works, deepens the play of colour and geometry on the canvas to the point of optical illusion. For this is how she creates the conscious irritation of the viewer, to whom, when he looks several times at intertwining figures, cubistic-looking fragments of forms and bodies open up, which dissolve directly in the space of the geometrically arranged application of paint, only to reassemble as the distance to the picture increases.

Alexandra Sztemberszka has recently strengthened the moment in her works that evokes multi-layered visual levels in the viewer. Recent works thus show an exciting twist in the work. Her compositions, which up to now have been more poetically graceful, and which do not hide Gustav Klimt’s ornamental influences, are given a new, more expressionist undertone. Elements of various materials such as acrylic pastes, metal or plastic chips, worked into the canvas impulsively and coarsely, form multi-layered reliefs that contrast with her typical precise ornament-like application of paint. In her search for new tensions and more detachment within the pictorial language, Sztemberszka increasingly leaves the tradition of her neo-impressionist arrest, which is reminiscent of works by Henri-Edmond Cross, and embarks on a search for traces of new forms of representing pictorial expression. In this way, new opposing combinations take the place of the previously calming precision work that defined the style, and Sztemberszka thus approaches Op-Art in a new way, in the form of an expressive sculptural work.

Rebekka Csizmazia , Berlin 2018