The horse doesn’t eat cucumber salad, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, Haus Coburg 2009

[ Diers on Malgorzata Neubarth.]

Schwontkowski
Malgorzata Neubarth has been in my class for some time, she does perhaps
the most beautiful work there. She has chosen the most modest place in Delmenhorst, in the stairwell, a kind of niche in which she plans to hang small pictures. Malgorzata mainly paints in small format.
I always say - but you probably can't print this - she can paint the aura of stockings, if you get my drift ... Basically, she's a totally sacred painter, she's been painting a lot of portraits reminiscent of icons lately, I believe inspired by old church paintings.
Diers
What does that have to do with her roots? Where was she born?
Schwontkowski
She comes from Poland, from Warsaw. She spends most of her time in Warsaw, when she is not in Hamburg.
Diers
"Aura of stockings", that makes me think of fine oil paintings with a mother-of-pearl sheen.
Schwontkowski
Yes, something like that. She paints many very different motifs, even trivial things, everyday situations, her own experiences, etc., but there is always something spiritual, something sensually exalted in almost all her paintings.
She is one of the few from whom I have bought a painting myself,
a small picture painted on card, a portrait of something that truly captivates me when I see it.
Diers
And does that have something to do with religious painting? That seems to be the only overarching theme in her work ...
Schwontkowski
It might just have something to do with memory or emptiness or something internalised. I don't think she is religious at all.
Diers
But perhaps she can remember a tradition that she follows, that she varies ...
Schwontkowski
Yes, she found something there, but Poland is not necessarily the land of icons, the Black Madonna also comes from the Caucasus.
Diers
But there are many icons of the Virgin in Polish churches ...
Schwontkowski
I really don't know exactly. Funnily enough, I always thought icons were more at home in the Eastern Roman area.
​
published in the exhibition catalogue