Jörg Kujawa (born in Osnabrück in 1973) is a painter who studied art at the University of Osnabrück. Having been involved in painting since his youth, he has developed a visual language that oscillates between intimacy, observation and atmospheric condensation. His precise perception and strong inner sensibility give rise to paintings that make an impact through their haptic, physical presence. Photographic sketches serve as his starting point – the decisive factor is the translation of what he perceives into the sensual materiality of paint.

Jörg Kujawa’s works move between urban city spaces, portraits and museum interiors. His visual worlds often appear like cinematic stills: excerpts from everyday life in which movement, light and silence converge. The compositions arise from the interplay of clearly defined surfaces and lines – shifted horizontally and vertically against each other – and are charged with figures, gestures or details from the urban space. Cables, hydrants, pipes, security cameras or graphic breaks function as structural elements that lend the images tension and presence.

The focus is on the moment of seeing: pausing in passing, a moment between distance and closeness. The figures are less portraits in the classical sense than carriers of inner states – often introverted, melancholic, without direct eye contact. The artist is not interested in exact representation, but in what lies beneath: mood, memory and psychological depth. He repeatedly works with the principle of the image within an image – art-historical references and quotations (including from the paintings of Degas, Vermeer, Ingres and Manet) appear as motivic layers and open up space for new narratives.

Jörg Kujawa understands his painting as a sensual process: oil is predominantly layered alla prima wet-on-wet, the surface deliberately remaining lively and tactile. Broken shades of grey, green and blue often determine the colour scheme; a diffuse veil covers the scenes and intensifies the atmosphere between lightness and melancholy. The aim is not smooth perfection, but a painterly presence in which brushstrokes, layering and materiality deepen the pictorial space.

The artist has received several awards, including the Piepenbrock Art Promotion Prize. His works have been exhibited in Germany and Paris and are held in private and public collections.

Jörg Kujawa lives and works in Osnabrück.

Further information about the artist you find here.