Zdena Šafka (born 1953) studied fabric design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. From the 1980s she worked in fabric and costume design, fashion design, tapestry restoring and teaching. Since 2005 she has devoted herself wholly to fine art, above all painting. During this time, the focus of her expression has alternated between the contrasting poles of lyrical figuration and geometrical abstraction. The diverse themes of her pictures share a distinctive sense of stylisation, compositional harmony and colour poetics. Šafka’s images are based on her personal experiences as well as on her awareness of the miraculous essence of the world. The series of paintings that she is presenting at GASK were inspired by nature in the immediate surroundings of her home and studio. Ordinary objects taken from nature (such as fern and dandelion leaves) create stencils for Šafka’s spectral colourist reflections suggesting an affinity with musical sensibility.

Curator Richard Drury