Agnieszka Żak

Born in 1982 in Warsaw. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan (2004–2005) and then graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2007, she obtained a diploma from the Faculty of Painting in the studio of Prof. Jarosław Modzelewski, with an annex in the Studio of Art in Public Space of Prof. Mirosław Duchowski, which she defended with honours.

She is the winner of the ‘Prof. Józef Szajna Diploma 2007’, awarded on the initiative of Prof. Szajna and the Studio Gallery in Warsaw. She is a scholarship holder of the Entry Initiative, a two-time scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2010, 2020) and the Capital City of Warsaw (2019).
In 2019, she obtained a Doctor of Arts degree at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, under the supervision of Prof. Stanisław Baj. She currently runs the Drawing and Painting Studio in the Interior Design Department at the University of Technology and Economics in Warsaw.

‘Arkana Wielkie’ is a series of paintings depicting patterned scarves and fabrics juxtaposed with each other in the form of a painterly collage. It is inspired by universal archetypes – characters, symbols and motifs deeply rooted in culture, present in myths, rituals and Tarot cards. The series also refers to the phenomenon of the enormous popularity of contemporary tarot readers operating on YouTube – online spiritual guides who respond to the growing demand for knowledge about the future.

Attempts to read signs and predict fate have accompanied humanity since the dawn of time. Avant-garde trends in 20th-century art also grew out of contemplation of spiritual reality. Rudolf Steiner – a mystic and philosopher – inspired artists such as Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. Central to their thinking was the concept of the archetype, understood as a primal image – an idea introduced into the language of psychology by Carl Gustav Jung, who also drew on the work of Rudolf Steiner.