The National Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum presents the first museum solo exhibition by Polish artist Ewa Juszkiewicz. The show, part of the program dedicated to the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, features 24 paintings created between 2013 and 2026 and will be open to the public in Madrid until September 6.
Curated by Guillermo Solana in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition offers a journey through Juszkiewicz's recent evolution, including works conceived specifically for this event.
For over a decade, the artist born in Gdańsk has been reinterpreting the tradition of European female portraiture. Her aesthetic combines classical references with surreal and contemporary elements, using 18th and 19th-century portraits as a starting point. Juszkiewicz radically alters visual codes by concealing the models' faces beneath compositions of flowers, fabrics, fruits, hair, and organic forms.
Through these interventions, the artist questions the ideals of beauty and social conventions that have historically defined the representation of women in European painting. She shifts the focus from individual identity to the decorative and symbolic elements surrounding the female figures.
The exhibition highlights the Polish creator's refined pictorial technique, which directly dialogues with classical tradition while incorporating more saturated colors and an unmistakably contemporary visual language. The result is unsettling and ambiguous imagery that oscillates between the human and the non-human, opening new interpretations of concepts such as identity, presence, and representation.
Among the pieces on display are works such as Silk and Musa Leaf (2025) and Untitled (after Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun) (2021), representative examples of a body of work that has established Juszkiewicz among the most recognized contemporary artists on the international scene.
The exhibition also underscores the influence of surrealism on her work and her interest in reformulating the portrait genre from a critical and current perspective. By removing the face, the traditional psychological and narrative center of the portrait, the artist breaks viewer expectations and multiplies the interpretive possibilities of each work.
Ewa Juszkiewicz's international career includes exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of China. Her work is also part of the permanent collections of international museums like the Albertina in Vienna, the Long Museum in Shanghai, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
The exhibition will be open to the public in the Postpop rooms of the Thyssen-Bornemisza from May 26 to September 6, 2026. The museum maintains its usual opening hours, Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM, with free admission on Mondays from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM.
