Ella Krugļanska (Kruglyanskaya)

Ella Krugļanska is an internationally renowned Latvian painter. Her works lead the viewer into colour- and contrast-saturated compositions dominated by female figures. With a clear awareness of the infinitely rich spectrum of the representation of female bodies in the tradition of visual art, Krugļanska’ s works continue this reflection on the principals of depicting the female form today. The artist retrospectively touches on 20th century styles while varying technical and formal approaches, combining graphical and painterly techniques and drawing influences from popular culture.

In “Female Weightlifter with Paper Cuttings” the artist has used oil pastels to sketch a half figure of a young woman holding a ten-kilogram dumbbell against a neutral background. The added colour fields look like stuck on pieces of paper, giving the image greater depth and multilayering, just like the dumbbell gives the illusion of volume to the plane of the drawing. While all of Krugļanska’s personages are imaginary, the subjects she explores with a healthy dose of humour and irony touch on important questions relating to female roles and identities across different families.

Female Weightlifter with Paper Cuttings. 2017.