Izabella Gustowska, “Changeability of Vision I”, 1977, auto-offset printing, 99 x 80 cm

Izabella Gustowska (b. 1948, Poznań) is an artist and educator who works in painting, printmaking and photography, and realizes installations, performances and video-performances. She received her diploma in 1972 in the studio of Tadeusz Jackowski at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań. She is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Multimedia Communication at the same institution, now named the University of Arts in Poznań, where she runs the Studio of Film and Performative Activities in the Department of Intermedia. She also runs the Drawing Studio in the Graphic Arts Department of the Collegium Da Vinci in Poznań. Together with Bogumił Kaczmarek, Wiesław Krzyżaniak and Wojciech Müller, she formed the Od Nowa Group from 1970–78. In 1979, together with Krystyna Piotrowska, she founded Galeria ON, which she ran until 1992. Among the numerous awards she has received are the Grand Prix of the 8th Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin in 1976, the Birgit Skiold Memorial Prize at the Eight British International Biennale in Bradford in 1984, and the Grand Prix d’honneur for exploration in printmaking at the 2021 International Triennial of Printmaking in Kraków. In 1999, she received the Art Prize of the City of Poznań.

In the 1970s, Izabella Gustowska made a series of three experimental prints entitled Changeability of Vision. Two of these are in the Galeria Studio Collection. At the time, the artist’s model was a student, Krystyna Przybylska, who helped the Od Nowa Group sew the forms used in their performance activities, and who was chosen for her figure which deviated from the academic canon of female beauty at the time. The artist sees her works from this series as a prelude to her next graphic series Women I-V from 1978.

Paulina Olszewska