Agnieszka Nienartowicz, a Polish artist based in Cracow, has gained recognition for her captivating hyper-realistic paintings that blend classical art with contemporary tattoos on the skin of her female subjects. Nienartowicz’s work is characterized by its exceptional technical precision, with barely a visible brushstroke. She is deeply fascinated by the human form and the inner life of her subjects, often drawing inspiration from the art of Old Masters like Caravaggio, Hokusai, and Botticelli. The classical art motifs she incorporates serve as a tribute to the past while also looking towards the future.
Nienartowicz’s paintings are not merely technical feats, but also deeply personal reflections on her experience as a Polish emigrant and the scars of her ancestors’ difficult history. By permanently adorning her female subjects with these historical and religious imagery, she imbues her work with a powerful emotional charge. Through this unique blend of classical art and contemporary tattoos, Nienartowicz is pushing the boundaries of what we can expect from contemporary figurative oil painting.
In painting, I have always been interested in people and have always painted people. I think that this is because man is a living being who has unique and the strongest features of all living beings: conscience, the ability to look deeply into the future and the past, faith in life after death, and the spiritual world. This means that man has a deep and complicated inner life and as a result of all these features, he is the only species on Earth who creates art. I love art, especially painting, and when I look at paintings I try to feel the emotions of its creator, understand his internal dilemmas and thoughts. I like to read biographies of artists, too. I gradually bring in/lead into my paintings with these ones, which influenced me in a particular way, initially putting them in the form of a background. I let them combine with my paintings and take on a new life, a new meaning. These paintings were important to me, so why shouldn’t I use them in my art as requisite, like props. It is also a kind of a dialogue with the creators of these works. After some time, I started to place fragments of old paintings in the form of paintings or tattoos on the bodies of people who I was portraying.
Agnieszka Nienartowicz
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