On the Cover: June 2023On the Cover: June 2023

Ella Kruglyanskaya’s Bather With Sunglasses sold for £20,320 at Phillips Wired: Online Auction on April 12-19, 2023. Born in Latvia, Kruglyanskaya now lives and works in New York City. Known for her oversized canvases, Kruglyanskaya’s works certainly pack a punch with her voluptuous and fierce female figures.

Though her images are at times reminiscent of comic strips of the 50s and 60s (but with an unspoken punchline), Kruglyanskaya reassures her audience that her art is very much modern—complete with humor-tinged scenes and a “don’t take yourself so seriously” attitude. Her work is known to reject any clear narrative or personal style; she describes her work as “what you see is what you get.” The female characters she depicts tend to blend with their backgrounds yet, at the same time, seem to burst out of the frame with their outfits and expressions.

What makes Kruglyanskaya’s art stand out is her ability to work in several ways of painting, rather than presenting a series of paintings linked by style and subject, per Roberta Smith’s New York Times review of Kruglanskaya’s 2021 exhibition at Bortolami Gallery in New York City. Kruglyanskaya has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, Rome and Berlin, and her art is included in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London.

Some of our other favorites, from Phillips Wired: Online Auction on April 12-19, 2023, appear throughout the issue.