An exhibition of finalists from 15th Geppert Competition

An exhibition of finalists from 15th Geppert Competition / 09.04.2026 - 12.05.2026

On 9 April, the City Gallery in Wrocław will open an exhibition of finalists from the 15th Geppert Competition. The show presents works by fifteen painters selected from over 1,200 submissions through a multi-stage evaluation process. The opening will be held alongside an awards ceremony celebrating the winning painterly stances.

The City Gallery will be closed from May 1 to 3.

The 15th edition of the Geppert Competition – a painting competition with a tradition spanning nearly 40 years – has been marked by significant organisational changes, most notably the abandonment of the previous expert nomination model in favour of an open submission format. As a result, the first stage attracted 1,215 applications from artists working across an exceptionally diverse range of aesthetics, representing a wide variety of approaches to the painted image and attitudes towards painterly tradition. The fifteen finalists are distinguished by a strong individualism in their engagement with the painted medium, its essence and its purposes – expressed through the autonomy and originality of their visual language. This selection, however, is more than a gathering of compelling contemporary positions within this classical discipline. It also seeks to diagnose broader tendencies, phenomena and shifts within painting, and to open them up to critical reflection. The exhibition – foregrounding relationships, dialogues and tensions between the works – aims to identify the key motifs and concepts shaping today’s understanding of the painted medium.

Sonia Ruciak, one of the exhibition’s curators, describes the works on show as follows: The resulting group of artists does not form a stylistically unified body of work. On the contrary, its strength lies in the multiplicity of perspectives. Individual works reveal different approaches to working with the image, and different relationships between representation and abstraction, narrative and the materiality of the painted surface. One of the most significant phenomena to emerge across the exhibition, however, is a distinct revaluation of figuration, understood in a visually multidirectional sense, whose formal diversity underpins the narrative pluralism represented by the selected artists.

This year, for the first time in the 37-year history of the Geppert Competition, it is being organised in close collaboration between the Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts and the City Gallery in Wrocław. This partnership has both a symbolic and a practical dimension. It underscores the competition’s strong ties to the city, while also creating a framework that brings together the potential of the academic community and the expertise of a public exhibition institution, thereby broadening the scope of the event.

Reflecting on the significance of the Geppert Painting Competition within its long-standing tradition, Professor Wojciech Pukocz, Rector of the Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts, remarks: Over thirty years of the Geppert Competition’s history one this emerges with clarity: painting endures. It survived the periods of greatest fascination with new media, and it holds its ground now, amid the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence. If anything, such a context only makes its significance more visible. Painting changes, transforms and takes on new forms, yet it remains one of the most intense modes of thinking through images.

The opening, during which the prize-winners will be announced, will take place on Thursday, 9 April at 6:00 pm at the City Gallery. The evening will be accompanied by a DJ set.

Artists: Agnieszka Apoznańska, Julian Bachur, Emil Bucki, Hubert Bujak, Konrad Chojnowski–Smagorowicz, Magdalena Chomiak, Przemysław Czepurko, Arkadiusz Karapuda, Marta Lissowska, Piotr Tadeusz Mosur, Ksawery Sajdak, Julia Słonecka, Paweł Słota, Patrycja Steczek, Kacper Wiatrak

Curators: Sonia Ruciak, Katarzyna Zahorska, Mirosław Jasiński

The exhibition runs untill 12 May 2026. Free admission.