I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most exciting young painters working today, Eva Helene Pade.

Born in Denmark in 1997, and based in Paris – where we are recording today – Pade is known for her rich and emotionally-charged, large-scale canvases populated with figures that morph in and out of abstraction. Often set in a dreamworld that can feel akin to being lost in a dance or state of unconsciousness, with fiery blazes and dark intense shadows, Pade’s paintings exist in places beyond the realm of our world. They are full of ambiguity: as a viewer, you are unaware of whether they are in day or night, heaven or hell, if the figures are male or female, or set in an ancient world or contemporary life.

Stylistically, Pade seems to borrow from a lineage of Northern European figurative artists, from Edvard Munch to Otto Dix, creating work akin surrealism or expressionism: artistic movements born out of a time of political tumult, yet exude freedom and liberation in their subject and handling of paint. This creates an interesting conversation about the state of the world vs then, and now.

But she also goes further, imbuing her work with ancient stories and figures – such as Eve or maybe Ophelia – and stories, such as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet she was inspired by after seeing a performance choreographed by Pina Bausch, the influential German dancer. And like Bausch, Pade was drawn to rework the story from a female lens, which served as the foundation for her first ever museum show at Arken Denmark, opening just a year after she graduated from The Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen…

Today, we meet Pade in her Paris studio on a very hot day ahead of a new exhibition of paintings that opens at Thaddeaus Ropac in London in October, and I can’t wait to find out more…

Exhibition: https://ropac.net/exhibitions/764-eva-helene-pade-sgelys/

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic

Music by Ben Wetherfield