LOVELY PEOPLE

With luminous colours, clear compositions and a deliberately female perspective, Natalia Rak brings fresh energy to urban art, a movement whose global presence keeps growing. Her paintings tell stories and draw viewers in with an almost magical intensity.From Canvas to FaçadeNatalia Rak was born in Poland in 1986. As a child she already wanted to paint, and she experimented with drawing, screen printing, graphic design, painting and sculpture. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź she studied fine art with a focus on graphic design and illustration, graduating in 2012. Her first large-format works, on canvas, date from 2011. Since then she has painted murals on commission around the world, on brick, concrete and façades several storeys high.Stories Between Dream and RealityAt the heart of her work is the threshold between reality and dream. Her figures inhabit surreal scenes that draw on Polish folklore and the tradition of the fairy tale. Influences from Polish painting, including Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Jacek Malczewski, as well as from comics and illustration, also run through her work.Colour heightens the power of these stories: luminous red meets turquoise, orange meets deep green and violet. Much of the intensity comes from oil paint, which she often combines with acrylic. Her classical training shows in the assurance with which she renders bodies, fabrics and light. Her figures are stylised, yet deeply realistic.Murals and FestivalsNatalia Rak has been invited to many renowned urban art festivals, including the Walk & Talk Festival on the Azores, the No Name Festival in France, the STROKE Art Fair and Art Whino.In 2013, at the Folk on the Street festival in Białystok, she painted The Legend of Giants. It shows a girl, a giant, caring for a tree that grows directly in front of the wall. The mural draws on a local legend: giants first destroy the world around them, then learn to protect nature. She completed the work in seven days. The same year she was the only woman and the youngest artist at the Richmond Mural Project in the United States.Art magazines named The Legend of Giants one of the five best urban artworks of 2013, alongside works by Banksy and JR. Hi-Fructose highlighted the same year that her style and technical skill are equally convincing on canvas and on walls.AwardsIn 2013 she won the Art Battle in New York, a competition in which artists paint live in front of an audience.Exhibitions with Pretty PortalIn 2014 Pretty Portal presented her exhibition Through the Looking Glass, which is exemplary of her visual language: a figure steps into another world, like Alice. In 2016 she took part in the group exhibition Lovely People alongside Pixelpancho and Sokar Uno. In 2021 she participated in the group exhibition Bestranged.In 2024 Pretty Portal organised and curated the project Kultur meets Euro in Düsseldorf, in which Natalia Rak took part.

Robots are the recurring theme in Pixelpancho’s work. He describes what drives him:“I am driven by a forgotten world hidden beneath a thick layer of dust and dirt. There, robots exist as a creation of humankind, dented and worn, a symbiosis of the organic and the inorganic, whose rusted iron is falling apart. Full of dreams, wishes and hopes.” – Pixelpancho (translated)A Forgotten WorldIn his surreal visual world, humans, puppets and robots merge into images that allude to major commercial brands, superheroes and well-known pop icons. All of them are subject to constant change, and their decay is looming. His work convinces not only through its striking motifs but also through a distinctive style that draws on many different sources. Traces of Joaquín Sorolla, Salvador Dalí, the political painting group El Equipo Crónica, Ron English and Takashi Murakami can be seen in his work.From Academy to StreetPixelpancho was born in Turin in 1984. His grandfather, who painted occasionally, introduced him early to colour and form. He studied at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin and completed his degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia. There he encountered the graffiti and street art scenes. He began working on outdoor surfaces with spray cans and markers, which set him apart from fellow students who worked on paper and canvas. Travelling between Turin and Valencia, he seized every opportunity to be seen on the street, on tiles, walls, stickers and posters.Festivals and the International SceneOn numerous trips, Pixelpancho took part in festivals and showed his work in exhibitions. He is considered one of the leading figures of the Italian urban art scene, which has developed around artists such as Blu, Ericailcane, the Fame Festival and Studio Chromie.