Juliana Mrvová — Les jardins recréés

Juliana Mrvová’s oeuvre is known for her large-scale canvases painted with acrylics or ink; however, we can also find smaller drawings and works on paper among her works. There she mainly depicts motifs from nature and plants. She also draws her inspiration from her travels abroad; she incorporates various landscapes inspired by seascapes and beaches in her works. Her strong affection for nature is reflected not only in her art, but also in everyday life: she grows various kinds of plants, flowers, herbs, and sometimes she even designs gardens. As a background for her works she uses herbariums, she appropriates scientific drawings, botanical schemes and plant studies. She fuses them into a vivid, colorful visual language with a flowing brushwork.

The pair of paintings Les jardins recréés 12 and Les jardins recréés 13 was presented at the Nitra Gallery during the exhibition titled The Beach (“Pláž”) in 2006 [1]. After the end of the exhibition, these works were donated to the gallery’s collection. The paintings convey abstract colorful motives and blots that conjure up associations of details from flowers and plants. The titles of both paintings are in French and could be freely translated as “Revived Gardens”. The French word „recréer“ means to regenerate, revive, re-create but also invigorate, enliven, brighten, or animate. The semantics of the title allows us to perceive the small-scale canvases as an effort to capture and reproduce the beauty of a blooming garden. The light color scale and airy composition allow us to perceive it also as a refreshing and perceptively pleasing visual garden motive.