Art curator Dr. Stefanie Lucci

With vibrant vivacity Joanna Latka traces the life of Lisbon. Distinctive and typical architecture, public places with their cafés, traffic, and social cooperation. Everything characteristic of this city is being portrayed by Joanna Latka in a charming and loving way. Joanna Latka also portrays herself - you can find her in a red dress in different episodes and situations, creating the impression of a diary or a cartoon-story.

Crooked perspectives, streets that flow into the picture, street-lights which seem to have a life of their own create a strange dynamic and atmosphere of the city. It seems as if her drawings would instantly start to live. Her lively stroke is capable of making you feel the wind blowing through the alleyways and making you hear the raindrops drumming against umbrellas or even the people chatting in the patios. Joanna Latka’s pictures are an invitation to Lisbon.

September 2009

Professor Piotr Jargusz

Joanna Latka was born in a country situated at the crossroads of the spirituality and emotionality of the East and the intellect of the West. In a bygone empire. In a country where, in the time of too many wars, poets turned to soldiers and musicians turned to politicians. In the country of Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Czeslaw Milosz and Zbigniew Herbert.

She was born just before the collapse of communism in the city of Krakow, which was a lucky coincidence. Krakow has always been a major centre for Polish art and culture. It is a place where the old and the new are relative notions. It is a place where the tombs of kings adjoin the banality of grim communist concrete blocks.

Krakow is also a major venue for important encounters.

Joanna Latka has been painting and drawing since she was a child. She’s been painting at home, she’s been painting on the floor, she’s been painting everywhere. She has maintained this spontaneous quality until today, in spite of a thorough artistic and pedagogical training, which sometimes is useful, but is also often nothing short of the taming.

It’s impossible to tame the imagination of Joanna Latka. Her works are a life diary and a variety of one of the trends of expressionism. They are also both an existentialist question and an existentialist answer.

Her works depict everyday life, but nevertheless are able to raise unusual reactions. Standing in front of them we can feel the authenticity of the transfusion of emotions made by the artist.

Joanna Latka, with her existentialist roots and romantic structure, is an exceptional artist. She is also a courageous person. Most fascinatingly for me, she finds her home in Portugal. Among the culture, tradition, art, history and the people of Portugal.

Her Portuguese adventure is certainly a very rewarding experience. I’m happy to wish her luck.

Professor Piotr Jargusz

Institute of Fine Art, Pedagogical University

Rob Plews abut me and my work

Joanna Latka, known to friends as Asia, came from Eastern block Poland with a big bag. In it is her MA in Fine Art, Chinese ink, her self styled techniques in etching and drawing, exhibitions from past to present, and a stack of illustrations. They are inspired biographically, from places and faces wherever that bag has taken her. Currently, they are residing in Lisbon, Portugal, where in a short space of time she has picked up the lingo and has been not only accepted, but embraced, in the Lisbon art scene. When Publico (one of the most revered newspapers in Portugal) got wind of her, they dedicated half a page to her and her work. It is not fame over night ‐ she has been doing this for years, always drawing, always learning. She has recently been attending the Gulbenkian Foundation, and is furthering her MA at the Fine Art (Belas Artes) Institute in Lisbon. On the scene she scouts spaces to show her work. She wants exposure to the whole spectrum of society who she feels can appreciate her, and so far her exhibitions have taken on both the underground art bubble, notably in illustration, and new and hip galleries where she is now selling. It was a wonderful compliment to her, when at a recent exhibition, one of her fellow students – still studying in his nineties, bought a piece by her. It transpired that this old man has been illustrating for generations, and only later did Joanna find out that he has his own gallery where he is going to put it.
Joanna’s work is biographical. Within her world is humour in the sinister, for example ‐ three evillooking women gobbling and gossiping in mouths full of sushi. There are ladies at the theatre who spend more time looking at themselves in pocket mirrors than at the stage. There is companionship, love and falling down buildings. There are bleak times in her choices of colour, sometimes dark, but there is always optimism. (...)
Underneath the art lies Joanna’s sensitivity and selflessness. Her work comes from her, without ego ‐ it is the work of heart on her rolled‐up sleeves. She has a purpose to illustrate her world. The story begins with a young woman from Poland.
Rob Plews