The Pink Cloud

Małgorzata Czyńska By Małgorzata Czyńska

Beata Murawska

Beata Murawska’s painting belongs to the tradition of Colourism. It is bound up with it and inspired by it so strongly that one is tempted to look for analogies or to quote the classics of the genre.

‘I am a Colourist painter,’ says Murawska. And this simple definition should be enough. We should accept it as sufficient explanation in itself, if we wanted to explain her art at all, this art which simply seduces with colour at first sight.

The paintings are vibrations of colour – powerful, saturated, dynamic colours are like the artist’s signature. A signature and a display of true artistic mastery.

Everything is recognisable here: the landscape, the trees, the flowers. But copying nature is not the point. Even the truth of nature is not the point. The artist, known primarily as a ‘tulip painter’, really can exploit this favourite motif endlessly; yet the label ‘tulip painter’ sounds patronising and trivialises her art, her talent. Each painting is about solving specific colour problems. Each one has its own truth based on lived experience.

Each painting is like an allusion to reality, even though it is easy to give each one a concrete title. Beata Murawska could repeat after Jan Cybis: ‘We don’t illustrate: we create an equivalent, an object in paint that stirs the imagination.’ It’s not about imitation then, but about expression. Within the confines of a picture, a separate world comes into being, one that delights the viewer with its beauty. She knows just how to do it, how to create beautiful worlds. In the viewer this becomes a deeply-felt experience, not merely a shallow sensation.

It’s no surprise, then, that Murawska is also drawn to the work of German Expressionists and that her most recent master is Emil Nolde, who painted sunsets as if he was swallowing them, as if they were burning his entrails. That lived experience again. There’s even less deliberation here: painting flows like a wave set in motion by an impulse. It flows with colour and light.

Just colour, just landscapes and flowers. So little and so much. Just art. Real, solid and sensuous. Looking at Beata Murawska’s paintings, we may hear at the back of our mind the words of another classic of the genre, the colourist Hanna Rudzka-Cybisowa: ‘Art will always be contemplation, for otherwise it would cease to be what it is: that is, exactly that – contemplation.’

Beata Murawska

I’m a colourist painter. The definition is simple: I see colour, I think and feel in colour.

Every day I lay out my tubes of paint. Streams, rivers, lakes pour out of them. ‘You carry art around in your paint box,’ the colourist painter Jan Cybis wrote. ‘Paint is a beautiful thing. It dictates its own laws in the same way that nature does, the nature you carry in front of your eyes.’ I squeeze colours out onto my palette, which over time has changed from a flat board into a colour fossil.

Beata Murawska
Roztopy | Thaw | Tauwetter, 2015, 150 × 180 cm [Price: PLN 9000]

Winter. Frost


Winter. Frost. I didn’t go out today. I stayed in my studio, where painting happens. Sometimes I feel it happens outside me, and yet every picture fills me with excitement, love, expectation: what (…)

Winter. Frost. I didn’t go out today. I stayed in my studio, where painting happens. Sometimes I feel it happens outside me, and yet every picture fills me with excitement, love, expectation: what will it bring? Doubt, weariness, physical pain also belong to art, to an artist’s work. I don’t have to go out to paint landscapes. On the canvas a road winds through snow.

Zorza | Red Sky | Morgenröte, 2016, 30 × 30 cm
Zorza | Red Sky | Morgenröte, 2016, 30 × 30 cm [Price: PLN 3000]
Różowy pejzaż | Pink Landscape | Rosa Landschaft, 2015, 24 × 30 cm
Różowy pejzaż | Pink Landscape | Rosa Landschaft, 2015, 24 × 30 cm [Price: PLN 3000]
Beata Murawska
Różowa chmura | Pink Cloud | Rosa Wolke, 2016, 50 × 60 cm [Price: PLN 4000]

A pink cloud


A pink cloud. It was there or perhaps it wasn’t. I saw it or I didn’t see it. In the painting it spreads over the world like an umbrella. Sensuous muslin, soft plush. I love pink, it’s my (…)

A pink cloud. It was there or perhaps it wasn’t. I saw it or I didn’t see it. In the painting it spreads over the world like an umbrella. Sensuous muslin, soft plush. I love pink, it’s my colour. Even my boxing gloves are pink.

Beata Murawska
Wstęga | Ribbon | Band, 2016, 18 × 16 cm [Price: PLN 2500]

Every painting is a way of explaining the world to myself


Every painting is a way of explaining the world to myself. A joy, an experience. I’m not a philosopher; I have no such ambitions. I look, I feel, I paint. A painting may sometimes come as a (…)

Every painting is a way of explaining the world to myself. A joy, an experience. I’m not a philosopher; I have no such ambitions. I look, I feel, I paint. A painting may sometimes come as a surprise: no, this landscape was different in reality, the colours were less intense. Or were they in fact exactly like this? Has it all been filtered, transformed through my mood, my delight, my longing, my anger? Perhaps there’s no point in wondering; art has its own laws. ‘Painting is not producing but thinking; it’s a question of attitude,’ maintained the painter Hanna Rudzka-Cybisowa (those colourists again!). ‘Nature is always the same. A ready-made painting does not exist in nature. A painting is created.’ Piotr Potworowski (colourist, obviously) said: ‘A painting is made for humans, not for the scenery; nature does not contemplate its reflection in the painting as if in a mirror.’

Na południu | In the South | Im Süden, 2012, 50 × 70 cm
Na południu | In the South | Im Süden, 2012, 50 × 70 cm [Price: PLN 5000]
Droga wśród wzgórz | Road Among Hills | Weg zwischen den Hügeln, 2014, 150 × 180 cm
Droga wśród wzgórz | Road Among Hills | Weg zwischen den Hügeln, 2014, 150 × 180 cm [Price: PLN 8000]
Beata Murawska
Żar | Heat | Hitze, 2016, 150 × 200 cm [Price: PLN 12000]

I reach the boundary beyond which painting becomes abstract


I reach the boundary beyond which painting becomes abstract. I brush against abstraction, but I remain among recognisable fields, meadows, flowers. With a broad, bold stroke I mark out clouds, a road (…)

I reach the boundary beyond which painting becomes abstract. I brush against abstraction, but I remain among recognisable fields, meadows, flowers. With a broad, bold stroke I mark out clouds, a road among hills. I punch my pink punch bag, hard, but I don’t stop thinking. I’m close to German expressionists, their wild colours, flamboyant, ragged patches of colour, powerful brush strokes. On the little table in my studio there’s a pile of books, and the one on top is a book of Emil Nolde paintings. I keep coming back to it again and again. The elemental colours in his landscapes take my breath away. Pink, purple and red clouds billow in a high sky. If one can talk about the poetry of colour, Nolde is a poet.

Przed nocą | Before Nightfall | Vor der Nacht, 2016, 150 × 200 cm
Przed nocą | Before Nightfall | Vor der Nacht, 2016, 150 × 200 cm [Price: PLN 12000]
Po horyzont | As Far as the Horizon | Bis an den Horizon, 2016, 150 × 200 cm
Po horyzont | As Far as the Horizon | Bis an den Horizon, 2016, 150 × 200 cm [Price: PLN 12000]
Upalne lato | Sweltering Summer | Heißer Sommer, 2016, 100 × 200 cm
Upalne lato | Sweltering Summer | Heißer Sommer, 2016, 100 × 200 cm [Price: PLN 12000]
Beata Murawska
Niewinność | Innocence | Unschuld, 2015, 180 × 140 cm [Price: PLN 9000]

Apropos of the expressionists


Apropos of the expressionists: Emil Nolde loved flowers. Karla Schmidt-Rottluff loved flowers. They would put potted cacti and other exotic plants on a table and paint them on one canvas after (…)

Apropos of the expressionists: Emil Nolde loved flowers. Karla Schmidt-Rottluff loved flowers. They would put potted cacti and other exotic plants on a table and paint them on one canvas after another. Nolde would go outdoors and paint rapidly in watercolours on little pieces of paper, as if taking delicate, overexposed snapshots of marsh marigolds, poppies, cornflowers, wild lilacs. I love flowers.

Rozkwit w fiolecie | Purple Blooms | Lila Blüten, 2012, 180 × 150 cm
Rozkwit w fiolecie | Purple Blooms | Lila Blüten, 2012, 180 × 150 cm [Price: PLN 12000]
Bukiet | Bouquet | Blumenstrauß, 2015, 150 × 180 cm
Bukiet | Bouquet | Blumenstrauß, 2015, 150 × 180 cm [Price: PLN 9000]
Beata Murawska
Łan | Field | Flur, 2016, 180 × 150 cm [Price: PLN 10000]

The tulip is my flower


The tulip is my flower. The hero of my paintings. I chose it, or perhaps it chose me. You’d need a psychoanalyst to find out who chose whom and why. To me, the tulip alone is enough, I don’t look (…)

The tulip is my flower. The hero of my paintings. I chose it, or perhaps it chose me. You’d need a psychoanalyst to find out who chose whom and why. To me, the tulip alone is enough, I don’t look for other flowers. New tulips on the verge of blossoming, still closed, are different from the mature, fleshy, regal ones. When fully open, they look like pansies. Nolde painted all the flowers of the world. Tulips too, of course. His watercolour ‘Madonna with tulips’ might as well be titled ‘Tulips with Madonna’.

Zachwyt | Delight | Begeisterung, 2012, 180 × 150 cm
Zachwyt | Delight | Begeisterung, 2012, 180 × 150 cm [Price: PLN 12000]
Zanurzyć się | Immersed | Eintauchen, 2011, 150 × 130 cm
Zanurzyć się | Immersed | Eintauchen, 2011, 150 × 130 cm [Price: PLN 9000]
Kielichy | Tulips | Blumenkelche, 2016, 156 × 114 cm
Kielichy | Tulips | Blumenkelche, 2016, 156 × 114 cm [Price: PLN 8000]
Beata Murawska
Drzewa na śniegu | Trees on Snow | Bäume im Schnee, 2015, 24 × 30 cm [Price: PLN 3000]

Trees as an ornament


Trees as an ornament. An ornament of trees. Change the light to dusk and it all becomes symbolic. Unease, mystery. By changing the colours I change the world. And again I don’t know whether this is (…)

Trees as an ornament. An ornament of trees. Change the light to dusk and it all becomes symbolic. Unease, mystery. By changing the colours I change the world. And again I don’t know whether this is the landscape I saw, whether it really looked like this.

An inward world, recorded inside me.

Pełnia księżyca | Full Moon | Vollmond, 2015, 200 × 100 cm
Pełnia księżyca | Full Moon | Vollmond, 2015, 200 × 100 cm [Price: PLN 9000]
Pejzaż egzotyczny | Exotic Landscape | Exotische Landschaft, 2017, 86 × 120 cm
Pejzaż egzotyczny | Exotic Landscape | Exotische Landschaft, 2017, 86 × 120 cm [Price: PLN 4500]
Pod światło |Against the light | Gegen das Licht, 2012, 30 × 60 cm
Pod światło |Against the light | Gegen das Licht, 2012, 30 × 60 cm [Price: PLN 3500]
Wiosna | Spring | Frühling, 2016, 150 × 180 cm
Wiosna | Spring | Frühling, 2016, 150 × 180 cm [Price: PLN 10000]
Beata Murawska
Po deszczu | After Rain | Nach dem Regen, 2016, 50 × 65 cm [Price: PLN 4000]

Sunsets


Sunsets. It’s a real mystery why this particular theme turns so easily into kitch when painted. Even if you are a good painter. And yet we ought to paint sunsets and sunrises, because what is there (…)

Sunsets. It’s a real mystery why this particular theme turns so easily into kitch when painted. Even if you are a good painter. And yet we ought to paint sunsets and sunrises, because what is there in the world that’s more beautiful? We must try. Some artists have managed it so well that subsequent generations of painters have difficulty overcoming their shyness; they don’t dare attempt a rising or setting sun. In 1895 Emil Nolde (of course it was he) painted a small picture of a red sun disc rising above mountains. He often said that picture had ‘shown him the way.’

Zmierzch | Dusk | Dämmerung, 2013, 40 × 60 cm
Zmierzch | Dusk | Dämmerung, 2013, 40 × 60 cm [Price: PLN 4000]
Zachód słońca | Sunset | Sonnenuntergang, 2016, 27 × 41 cm
Zachód słońca | Sunset | Sonnenuntergang, 2016, 27 × 41 cm [Price: PLN 2500]
Beata Murawska

A few months ago I did up my house. I painted the walls white. The pictures had to be taken off first.

The ones from the living room and dining room spent a long time stored in a corner somewhere while I savoured the white walls. I took in a deep breath, relished the emptiness, then paintings from the studio upstairs started wandering all over the house again.



Selected works

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