Kateřina Bartůňková

Bio

In her work, Kateřina Bartůňková has long been focused on depicting psychological states and inner experiences. The variability of the human psyche accompanied her throughout her studies, and painting became a space where she can process, express, and visualize situations that are often difficult to articulate. She develops psychological themes in her series through narratives that refer to different situations, layers of tension, and specific states of mind.

Even before her diploma project, she explored these topics through experiments with the figure, artificial materials, and organic environments. Working with the partial covering of objects and figures with synthetic materials allowed her to examine the relationship between the body, its visibility, and transformation. Contrasts between the organic and the artificial, between what is revealed and what remains hidden, became starting points for deeper reflections on identity, the psychological layers of the human being, and the tension between outer appearance and inner experience. This phase naturally foreshadowed her later investigation of psychological processes and inner conflicts.

In her diploma thesis, she drew on the story of a female patient suffering from hysteria, inspired by Freud’s case studies. This narrative became the foundation for a series of paintings in which real-life situations intertwine with imaginative scenes visualizing psychological processes and inner struggles. It was the first time she significantly drew inspiration from external sources — until then, her work had mainly been based on her own experiences or those of people close to her.

Currently, she has moved away from concrete case studies and continues to explore the themes that accompanied her throughout her studies. She is shifting toward subtler layers of understanding, interpersonal relationships, and the ways in which inner processes manifest in everyday life. She is interested in closeness, distance, and moments of misunderstanding. After completing her degree, she relies more on intuition, experiments with new approaches, and searches for her own rhythm outside the academic environment. She sees the tension between creative work and professional life as a natural part of this stage.