TICK (2025) Malerei von Sonja Brzak

Born in Zagreb, Sonja Brzak completed her higher art education at the Arthouse-College of Visual Arts in Ljubljana, where she obtained the title of graduate painter. Her paintings are rich in color, to attract the viewer with the harmony of colors and their complementarity. He often withholds the background, leaving the viewer to focus on colors and shapes and seek a new angle of view. Composition, colors, textures and continuous research create new possibilities in structure, perspective and relationships. Each new canvas creates a new story, a different approach and evokes positive emotions in us. Playing with textures and colors, often in an abstract way, opens up a lot of space for the artist to be creative and present the rich world of creativity. Paintings are creative, colorful and aesthetically highly positioned.
Brush and painting movements ensure top technology, dedication and high aesthetic value of each work and dominant quality. The most common subject of painting by the academic painter Sonja Brzak is the human figure. The painter is dedicated to portraying one or more human figures that she connects and merges into one inseparable whole. Her work mainly consists of paintings that at first glance seem abstract, and are composed of numerous shapes with sharp edges in the pure and dominant colors of red and blue. More and more frequently, the images are thematically completely undefined and, with their geometric abstraction, distance themselves from the subject. The painter sometimes experiments with automatism and uncontrolled body movements, and she softens or "liberates" the sharpness and hardness of geometric motifs by dripping light or dark colors on colorful canvases, thus creating a swirling composition of small and large traces. Her most suggestive work is undoubtedly related to depictions of human figures, which she stylizes and transforms into abstract forms. The recognition of motifs is not equally treated in all her works; it varies from one image to another, and the shape of the human body gradually "dissolves" beyond recognition. Therefore, in some paintings, human figures, although fragmented in many forms, are clearly drawn and emphasized with color and lines, and the observer can easily distinguish body parts. Other images show a shift towards stronger stylization marked by the loss of body lines in a complex grid of lines, and the indeterminacy and connection of forms is reinforced by an identical array of colors in the depiction of figures. In the end, the gradation of stylization leads to an abstract composition of forms, and newly painted stylized heads may point to the fact that the object of painting is a representation of the body. Sonja Brzak often returns to figurative painting and realism, painting a series of idealized portraits of beautiful, young women, more precisely their heads in (if we use the parameters of the film frame) close-up. The focus is on the faces that occupy the entire surface of the canvas and often go "outside" the frame, which emphasizes their size. The colors used are reduced to ocher and brown tones with a few accents of blue or muted red. Realism can also be seen in the paintings of naked women, where the colors used show the painter's dual preference for, on the one hand, strong and vivid colors, and on the other, subtle shades of tonal painting. The images are enriched with pastel, gentle tones and offer the viewer a harmonious play of colors full of vivacity. The colors are applied with broad strokes of the brush, reflecting the painter's passion and satisfaction in relation to the very act of painting, the materiality of the pigment and the beauty of its colors. Without the restrictive dark lines that we find on most works, they freely mix and connect, thus creating eye-pleasing scales and color relationships. The colors used are exactly what promises interesting solutions for some of the new ways of expression in painting.
The landscape as a motif is rarely encountered in the author's painting, but sometimes the motif takes her away and surprises her with its color and composition. Leaving part of the canvas with Landscape as a motif is rarely encountered in the author's painting, but sometimes the motif takes her and surprises her with its color and composition. Leaving part of the canvas with a blank, white surface, it stays on the safe terrain of detail and color.
She has been present on the international scene for several years by participating in her works on auction sales as well as online sales in Galleries.

1996 Zagreb, City Hall, Group exhibition of paintings
1998 Zagreb, City Hall of Gornji Grad, Group exhibition of paintings
2001 Sveta Nedelja, Tourist Union, an independent exhibition of paintings
2006 Sveta Nedelja, Tourist Union, Group exhibition of paintings
2009 Sveta Nedelja, Group Ceramics Exhibition, "Ceramics in the Heart"
2010 Sveta Nedelja,City Hall, Group exhibition of paintings
2012 Samobor, Group exhibition of ceramics, "Ceramic pottery"
2014 Samobor, City Library, Group exhibition of ceramics "Instruments"
2016 Zagreb,Lounge Bar, Group exhibition of paintings
2017 Samobor, City Library, Group exhibition of ceramics "Religion"
2018 New York,Artbox Project, participation in a virtual exhibition with two paintings TARA I and TARA II
2019 Sveta Nedelja, City Hall, Group exhibition of ceramics "Memento“
2025 Samobor,Group exhibition of ceramics“Mask“

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