With an auction circuit hungry for both new names and figurative works, Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz’s stardom is no surprise. This week at Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale, her 2019 painting Portrait of a Lady (After Louis Leopold Boilly) sold for $1,560,000. This was Juszkiewicz’s first seven-figure auction result. Though her path toward that price was swift.
In December of 2019, Almine Rech announced that they would represent Ewa Juszkiewicz, and she subsequently had two solo exhibitions with the gallery in London and then in Paris. Around the same time, Gagosian also hosted a solo exhibition of Juszkiewicz’s art-history-inspired paintings in New York and also began representing her. Juszkiewicz’s million dollar lot from earlier this week came from the 2020 Gagosian show.
Following these primary market milestones, Juszkiewicz made her auction debut at Sotheby’s in London in March of 2021. Her 2012 painting In the Park sold for $147,622 over a $27,420 estimate. In her second auction season, fall of 2021, Juszkiewicz has six artworks come on to the block, all of which sold over estimate with hammer ratios soaring to as high as 18.0.
Jusciewicz’s paintings now reside in the collections of institutions worldwide. Including a number of museums in her native Poland as well as the ICA Miami, the Long Museum in China, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. In the context of other popular artists like Flora Yunkhovich, Jusciewicz’s success illustrates the contemporary interest in artists that look to history.
