Bożena Cajdler-Gruszkiewicz, Sleeping Woman by Tamara Lempicka, 2022

30x37 oil on panel with stretched canvas with frame, signed, frame selected by the artist

Bożena Cajdler- studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Diploma in the studio of Prof. Stanisław Borysowski in 1965.

The range of subject matter undertaken by the artist, as well as the type, and manner of solving the tasks set before her is very consistent and coherent. Her interests focus on two genres that are not very popular today - portrait and still life. (...)

The paintings seem old-fashioned at first glance, because the painter uses a mannerism that experienced its glory long ago. Namely, it's about representational, figurative art, which the artist advocated from the very beginning.

At this point it is worth raising the issue of the artist's relationship with the painting tradition, which is important for her. Writing about the work of Bożena Cajdler, it is impossible to omit such an important problem of her art as the attitude to the past. The artist herself admits that she is fascinated by the paintings of the Italian Renaissance and later trends referring to this tradition, such as classicism or Pre-Raphaelite painting. Among her favorites are the Ouatrocento masters, especially Sandro Botticelli, Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, whose harmonious compositions combine Renaissance rationalism, harmony and poeticism.

The painter also drew experience from Dutch still lifes, from the paintings of Vermeer. The important thing is that she always chooses from a huge tradition what connects to her favorite motifs - portraiture and still life. To her great predecessors she owes not only the perfection of her workshop, but also an enormous painting culture. (...)

Bożena Cajdler is a painter of patient, artisanal work. Her paintings are created in concentration, with all the restorative meticulousness, but at the same time they contain that elusive, instinctive something. What is their uniqueness based on? The portraits are characterized by an exquisite psychological sense of the model, while the still lifes are meditations on the ways in which objects exist with each other. The seemingly monotonous painting is a lesson in subtlety and finesse, a school of observation and contemplation of reality to capture and convey the essence of the painter's vision. Bozena Cajdler's oeuvre is remarkably uniform, in each case a humble and consistent study of the visible.