Gustavo Zajac

Gustavo Zajac is a contemporary artist whose work is shaped by a deep interest in the history of art and by his own experience as an immigrant.

His inspiration, the engine of Zajac’s creativity, flows from past generations of masters whose works are, inextricably, timeless. So great works interact with all who see them, sometimes across centuries, and become a force that shapes the future.

Reading in between the lines Zajac’s latest Collection and bearing in mind his migrant influence seems to be that as an artist, and as a human being, Zajac has found himself on an endless journey to relate his own creativity to a vast but living artistic heritage. His consummate skills were honed as he worked as a restaurateur of religious imaginary, but he retains a whimsical and gently ironic perspective perhaps acquired in any of his adopted land.

The paintings presented here are a selection from his latest body of work titled ‘Migrants’. Each has been inspired by classic, sometimes religious, works but, in each case, the artist has connected with the person behind the image from an unexpectedly stance. This form of delightful respectful irrelevance has been facilitated by Zajac’s cultural diversity.

His artistic meditations on historic artworks demonstrate that each is more than a piece to be admired. This is because great works possess a kind of latent untapped potential that a contemporary artist can sense, nourish, and reinterpret. They have a timeless agency that stretches forwards and backwards in time enabling viewers to form free associations perhaps with modern figures, different states of mind, everyday occurrences, or even painful actual events.