Magdalena Kwapisz Grabowska

inspirations

Certain themes and fascinations keep returning in my work. There are artists I come back to again and again - as if their paintings were still in conversation with me. Picasso once said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” That idea feels especially close to me.
I’m not interested in copying form. What draws me is the attempt to “steal” something deeper - the spirit, the sensitivity, a way of seeing the world. I enter into a dialogue with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Velázquez, Frida Kahlo, Henri Rousseau, and Picasso himself. Each of them has left a trace that I try to read in my own way.
This kind of “theft” is not appropriation, but a form of conversation - translating their energy into my own painterly language.

Las Meninas and “Ladies-in-Waiting (with a Pug)”

“Ladies-in-Waiting (with a Pug)” is, for me, a conscious dialogue with one of the most perceptive paintings in the history of art - Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas. I have always been fascinated by how much tension he was able to contain within a single scene: gazes, relationships, presence and absence, and that subtle play of hierarchy - who is really at the center? Even the calmly resting mastiff seems to be more than just part of the composition, as if it were a quiet guardian of the entire order.
Picasso, in turn, gave me the impulse not to treat this masterpiece with too much distance. His reinterpretations of Las Meninas show that one can engage with art history in a deeply personal way - take it apart and reassemble it on one’s own terms. It was not a copy, but a deliberate transformation. And the presence of Lump, his dachshund, feels to me like a gesture that is both tender and subversive - introducing something intimate into the realm of high art.
My pug appeared precisely in that space - somewhere between history and everyday life. It is a bit of a joke, a kind of counterpoint, but also something very close and personal. I wasn’t interested in recreating either Velázquez or Picasso. I wanted instead to see what remains of the image when it is filtered through my own experience.
This is my conversation with both of them - but on my own terms.

Francisco de Goya

I love Goya for the density of his blacks, the simplicity of his composition, and the honest, beautiful message of his art.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

I love Johannes Vermeer for the quietness in his paintings, his masterful technique, and his love of detail.
The artist's most famous work, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring,' is a captivating portrait that showcases Vermeer's exceptional talent and ability to convey emotion through his subjects' expressions and gestures.

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

I love Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass because of its ambiguous social scene and its beautiful green tones.

infanta

I love all of Velázquez’s Infantas because they capture the elegance, dignity, and quiet complexity of royal portraiture. I’m fascinated by the way each one feels both formal and deeply human, with so much character hidden beneath the surface.

Henri Rousseau naive

I love Henri Rousseau because his naive style feels poetic, imaginative, and full of quiet magic. I’m drawn to the way he creates a dreamlike world that is simple on the surface, but deeply mysterious and emotional.

Monalisa and Lady with an Ermine

I love the Mona Lisa and Leonardo da Vinci because they represent timeless beauty, mystery, and genius. I’m fascinated by how the Mona Lisa’s subtle expression keeps me guessing, and by Leonardo’s incredible creativity, curiosity, and mastery across art and science.
I love Lady with an Ermine because it is one of Poland’s greatest treasures, and the ermine feels so lively and full of movement in the painting.

Power of Fida Kahlo

I love Frida Kahlo because her art is unapologetically personal and yet universal. She turns pain, identity, the body, love, and loneliness into images that feel raw, beautiful, and deeply honest.

I love her authenticity. She never hides or softens emotion.. I admire the strength in her vulnerability. She shows suffering in a way that feels brave and dignified. I’m drawn to her symbolism. Her paintings are full of meanings I can interpret in different ways.I connect with her sense of identity. She ties art to womanhood, the body, and Mexican culture.I feel the closeness in her work. It often seems like she is speaking directly about things others prefer to hide.

Pablo Picasso

Picasso significantly influences my art through his philosophy of eliminating unnecessary elements and synthesizing forms, which is evident in my creative process. I often quote his words: “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary,” reflecting my approach to geometrizing and abstracting figures, drawing closer to neo-figuration and pure form. In exhibitions like “(Nie)Moje obrazy” (Not My Paintings), I reinterpret classical works by masters, including echoes of Picasso’s Cubism, transforming realistic icons into geometrized essences that balance on the edge of abstraction.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

I love Pablo Picasso for his dialogue with Tradition: My works are a homage to great painters, but through synthesis and elimination of details, they connect to Picasso’s revolution in perceiving space and form.
Emotional Synthesis: Delicate color palette neutralizes compositional chaos, just as Picasso’s emotions are filtered through experimentation.

Deformation and Fragmentation: Like Picasso in Cubism, I break down female bodies into color patches and geometrized structures, symbolizing memory and metamorphosis.

Francis Bacon

I love him for his honesty, his madness, and his uncompromising nature. For the way he constructs form - at once alien and painfully familiar. For the courage to leave space empty, unresolved, and let it speak as loudly as the figure itself.

This painting takes the form of a triptych and builds tension between figure and abstraction. The deformed bodies, muted background, and restrained pink-violet palette create a mood of fragility, solitude, and unease.
Its atmosphere also clearly suggests an inspiration from Francis Bacon. Rather than presenting the body realistically, it treats the figure as something unstable, fractured, and emotionally charged, where flesh becomes a carrier of anxiety rather than anatomy.
What makes the image compelling is the way the triptych format intensifies that feeling. Each panel seems to show a different state of the same presence, as if the body were slipping between stability, distortion, and disappearance.

Cy Twombly

I love Cy Twombly because his art works more like poetry than illustration: it is subtle, emotional, and leaves space for my own interpretation. His work brings together gesture, text, myth, memory, and the artist’s own hand, creating something that feels both intimate and monumental.

Mark Rothko

I love him for the intensity of his color and his extraordinary sensitivity to its nuances. For the way colors permeate one another, pulsing like air; for their soft, almost breathing sfumato. For the warmth of reds, oranges, and magentas - colors you don’t just see, but almost feel on your skin.

Color here is not a surface, but an event. It seeps in slowly, as if breathing through the canvas, filtering through layers - at times almost invisible, at others heavy, viscous, leaving a trace like a tar stain. It flickers at the edge of vision, where the eye loses certainty: is this still light, or already shadow?
Wiped passages open up the space beneath, revealing the memory of earlier decisions. Impastos hold the gesture in place, thickening at points of tension, as if the paint suddenly becomes a body. Beside them, it spreads thinly, fluid, almost escaping the surface - as if it wanted to disappear, yet remains.
Shadows are not black. They are built from colors that devour and sustain one another. They tremble, pulse, shift with the viewer. What appears uniform breaks into layers; what seems soft conceals resistance.
Between all this, a tension persists: between weight and transparency, between fading and saturation. Color does not describe the world- it produces it, slowly, as if on the verge of silence..