Katherine Gavlova, HOLY VERONICA

Gouache, fiberboard; 64 x 74 cm
Signed p.d.: gaweł.
Estimate 1500 - 1800
◙ droit de suite
Katarzyna GAWŁOWA
1896 Zielonki - 1982 Zielonki
She bore the maiden name Chrzan. She was one of five children of her parents (siblings: Maria, Franciszek, Stanislaw and Zofia). She was born into a poor peasant family. From an early age she had to work hard on the farm. At the same time she manifested artistic aspirations, painting the walls of the household. In 1932 she married a widower with four children. Her husband died in 1939, after seven years of marriage. Her work was discovered in 1973, when she was 77, by Krakow-based visual artists Mieczyslaw Górowski and Jacek Lodzinski (Lodzinski later became her patron). The first and only vernissage of her works, in the form of a wedding, was held at the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow in 1977, at which time she began painting on dicta and paper. Previously, she had painted only on walls, ceilings, doors and stove, from time to time scratching off old motifs and replacing them with new ones. The artist's works also found their way to the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, and were viewed by the director of the Pompidou Center in Paris, among others.