JOANNA PILARCZYK

Joanna Pilarczyk is a London-based contemporary figurative painter. Born in Poland, she studied at the Art University in Zielona Gora, where she earned a Master’s degree in Visual Arts and Art Education. Pilarczyk’s artistic talent has earned her recognition and accolades. She was recently shortlisted for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024 at the National Portrait Gallery and long-listed for the Jackson’s Art Prize. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Boynes Monthly Artist Award and a finalist for the International FiKVA Award for Figurative Painters and the Women United Art Prize in both 2022 and 2021.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at prestigious venues like Mall Galleries at Women in Art Fair, Start Art Fair in Saatchi Gallery and the Other Art Fair in Truman Brewery, London. Additionally, she showcased her paintings at a solo show with Oink Gallery, featuring pieces from her ‘My Paradise’ series. Furthermore, Joanna actively participated in the Spring and Summer editions of the Other Art Fair in the last few years. Her artworks have even crossed international borders, with her paintings from the Intimate Times series exhibited at 33 Contemporary Gallery in Chicago, Mixx Atelier Gallery in Telluride, USA and Kunstbehandlung Gallery in Munich, Germany. As the Untitled Magazine Cover winner in May 2024, her paintings were exhibited at the Superfine Art Fair in Times Square, New York and the solo exhibition on Artsy curated by the Untitled Space Gallery. Moreover, she contributed her art to the ‘Memories in Hindsight’ group show at the J/M Gallery in London.

Combining the lively, flesh-toned bodies of her models with vibrant, clean abstract shapes, patterns and lemon-green foliage, Joanna Pilarczyk’s paintings pay tribute to modern portraiture and contemporary figurative art.

Born in Poland in the post-Soviet country when everything seemed plain and uninspiring, she remembers her first glimpses of Western culture appearing on TV, which sparked her fascination with Hollywood films and the vibrancy of the ‘idyllic’ American world. After moving to London years later, and having encountered these unknown, exotic places and people of many cultures, she began to be significantly influenced by them.