From 1974 and on Magdalena Cerha has produced a substantial body of works, ranging from sculptures, water color, portraits and oil paintings. In the early 90's she laid the foundation to the garden in Vallentuna that can be found present throughout her iconography. There is a symbiosis between the artists and the garden that is highly palpable.
During 2020, Magdalena and I photographed, named and cataloged many of her works. Being that she is in Sweden and I am in New York, it was quite a feat but not as hard as one might think. We used her iPhone and regular daylight to photograph. This was time consuming but very rewarding. We shared works and info via a shared Photo library. I pressed her to name works, talk about sources of inspiration and place them on a timeline. We used Messages and Facetime to discuss how best to categorize it all to make it digestible to an audience.
The result is this beautiful site, designed in Squarespace, with the ability to sell limited quantities of giclée prints directly through it.
If you honor her with a purchase, you are buying from a person who has dedicated her whole life to being an artist – the kind of artist we watch movies about, who has fled war, suffered separation, built a new life, fought for autonomy and rights, persevered as a single mother, and painted through it all.
Categories
When cataloging Magdalena's body of works, we came up with a few categories. Botanica is one of them, and encompasses all works with a strong botanical theme representative of the symbiotic relationship between artist and garden.
Portrait painting
A timeless art and an excellent gift to someone you love. To have your portrait done is an intimate and extraordinary experience. You sit face to face with the artist, who captures your persona onto canvas to last beyond a lifetime.
404 page
A witty 404 page helps with the site SEO. Here we took a character from one of the artist's collages and plopped him into a completely different painting of hers.
