Czech artist – Klara Kristalova

Klara Kristalova was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Sweden; she currently lives and works in Norrtälje, Sweden. Her father is Czech artist Eugen Krajcik and her mother was Helena Kristalova. She attended the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm 1988-93.

Klara Kristalova’s uncanny sculptures in bronze, ceramic, plaster and wood portray adolescent girls and boys, often marked with exaggerated features or transforming into flora or animals, that call to mind old folk tales, gothic novels, childhood fantasies, dreams, and nightmares. Although rooted in the decorative and craft tradition of 18th-century Meissen porcelain figurines, Kristalova twists this age-old technique by manipulating the glazes so that they often run and bleed into each other, the figures’ iridescent surfaces becoming more painterly than sculpted. Displayed in old wooden cabinets, or seated on child-sized beds and high chairs, Kristalova’s works evoke 18th and 19th-century Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities, creating a surreal micro-world in which viewers are invited to dwell.

Information and photo credits: www.artsy.net/artist/klara-kristalova