Marta Czok - Mother and Daughter

The human figure has always been at the center of artistic research. Since the classical age, the naturalistic rendering of human anatomy has been a primary goal of painters and sculptors throughout history. The representation of the female figure is an expression of this aspiration, which spans all eras and stylistic movements. Indeed, in addition to the naturalistic interpretations of the Renaissance and various classicisms, which aimed for a truthful and detailed representation of the human body, the female figure has also been a central theme in the new aesthetic concepts brought about by the historical avant-garde movements, such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. The female figure is central to Marta Czok's artistic production, especially in the more expressionistic phase of her pictorial research.

In contrast to the highly objective style adopted more recently by artist Marta Czok, this work demonstrates a more expressionist phase of the English painter's career. It is a series of small-format paintings characterized by delicate portraits of women or intimate genre scenes, suspended between refined lyricism and subtle existentialism. Indeed, the scenes depicted are grounded in the realism of raw everyday life, but it is Marta Czok's highly elaborate pictorial interpretation that brings out underlying messages. The representation undergoes a delicate process of synthesis that simplifies the image to make it more expressive. The figures are constructed with a bold, vibrant black line. The color is applied in broad chromatic areas in an almost two-dimensional space, while the brushstrokes seek to bring to the surface all the existential vibrations hidden behind these scenes of intense humanity. In this series, the light chromatic poetry of white and intense blue prevails.

An Englishwoman of Polish descent, Marta Czok was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1947. The following year, she moved with her family to London, where she completed her studies at St Martin's School of Art, participating repeatedly in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Over the past 35 years, she has exhibited her work throughout Europe and America. Among her most recent public exhibitions are Mother Rome at the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome in 2016; the retrospective exhibition at the Castello di Calatabiano, organized by the MACS Museum in Catania; Icons&Idols, a multimedia exhibition held in 2013 at the MACRO Testaccio in Rome – La Pelanda; the solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw, which was held in April and May 2017. Marta Czok has also worked on traveling exhibitions such as the solo exhibition dedicated to children in war and the Holocaust held at Palazzo Ferrajoli (Rome), the Civic Museum of Albano and Palazzo Antico Ghetto (Padua), and the exhibition About Us, on the theme of humanity, held at Palazzo dei Papi (Viterbo), Palazzo Zuckermann (Padua), and Palazzo Zenobio (Venice). Marta Czok lives and works in Castel Gandolfo.

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