IZABELLA GUSTOWSKA
KVOST is pleased to announce the Polish artist Izabella Gustowska (b. 1948) as this year’s recipient of the KVOST Stipendium and the Claus Michaletz Preis 2026, endowed with €10,000. The artist was selected from 124 applications.
Izabella Gustowska lives and works in her hometown of Poznań. Since the 1970s, she has played a central role in conceptually oriented Polish art concerned with representations of the body and a feminist critique of representation.
She is Professor at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań, where she heads the Experimental Film Studio. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including the São Paulo Biennale (1983, 1987) and the Venice Biennale (1988). Her works are held in renowned museums and collections in Poland and internationally, including the National Museum Wrocław, the Museum of Modern Art, and the private collection of Grażyna Kulczyk at the Susch Museum.
At the center of her artistic practice lie questions of identity situated between memory and fiction, as well as affinities with the work of other female artists. Biographical experiences are reflected against the backdrop of socio-political and feminist discourses. Her work is characterized by the use of text, photography, and film in connection with the “looping” technique she developed, which employs repetition and moments of return as a central compositional principle.
This year’s jury consisted of the artists Zuzanna Czebatul, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Boris Mikhailov, the curators Monika Branicka and Rainald Schumacher, Dr. Silke Manske and Corinna Reuter from the Secco Pontanova Stiftung, as well as the curator and director of the art association Stephan Koal.
