Magdalena Turzová
A website for the Olomouc-based painter Magdalena Turzová — figurative acrylic on canvas, with solo shows at Galerie XY, Galerie Caesar and the UFF festival in Uničov.
A long-running collaboration with the painter Magdalena Turzová — from exhibition graphics to her own website.
The brief
Painters' websites share one trap: they try to be artworks themselves and end up competing with the paintings. The aim here was the opposite — a catalogue, not a design showcase. White space, no extra colour, no frames, a single typeface. Anything that would ask for attention is gone.
The homepage as a hang
The opening page is not a grid of thumbnails but a scattered composition of canvases at different sizes on a white wall. It reads like an installation view: the paintings have air, they are not lined up in rows, and the eye picks its own route. Captions stay subdued so the first encounter is with the painting, not its title.
Works and detail
The index of works is chronological, grouped by year. The year is the only heading and the only navigational aid, set in grey so that it structures without shouting. Canvases share one column width and keep their own aspect ratio, so formats differ in height and the page gains an irregular, living rhythm. A project page is then one painting, centred, with a single line beneath it: title, medium, dimensions, year — the wall label.
Bio and exhibitions
The bio is a purely typographic CV: education, solo and group shows, each entry a single line opening with a year. Exhibitions get their own page with installation photographs, so it is visible how the paintings work in a room — something single reproductions never show.
I enjoy building sites for people whose work is already strong: the whole discipline is in not adding anything. White space, one typeface, paintings hung across the page as on a gallery wall, and the year as the only heading. The hardest part was resisting the urge to make it "design" too.
