The first thing that strikes one about Lucia Tallová’s works on paper is their object-like, almost sculptural quality. She finds the source material for her collages and assemblages, which are inhabited by women and female stereotypes from a wide range of historical periods, at flea markets and in antique shops: illustrated books about the 1974 Spartakiad, fashion and film magazines from the 1950s, and publications on the temples and sculptures of Classical Antiquity. Tallová combines the facial features of postwar models with the faces of Baroque Madonnas. She allows staircases, columns, and architectural elements to emerge from the collage like images in a pop-up book. Elsewhere, assembled female bodies merge with depictions of plants, twine, fragments of mountain ranges, and planetary orbits. Branches may lie across the paper like nerve pathways or flashes of lightning; stones become ornaments in the hair on the picture surface. Everything in these collages and assemblages pushes toward three-dimensionality, toward spatial presence.
The origins of this approach lie in painting, in the use of black paint, which Tallová first applied to create her semi-abstract, cloud-like paintings and later used to transform photographs and motifs taken from books and magazines. Over time, she began treating paper as a sculptural material that she could “shape,” fixing it in place so that it retains a specific position and tension. The paper is creased or crumpled, fanned out or folded, with corners protruding like wings or spreading like undergrowth. Through this process, Tallová creates precise yet intuitive compositions—forms of montage in which images overlap, motifs connect, and hidden memories or associations are brought to the surface. At the same time, her works create the impression that the history and condition of the material itself have been preserved, as though a moment has been suspended in time.
Tallová extends this technique into her assemblages. She places collages beneath glass domes, wedges charcoal between frames, glass, and paper, and allows it to extend beyond the image and frame, growing into a new image on the wall. Abstract structures emerge from dyed, crumpled paper; paper works are combined with fragments of furniture and parts of chair legs. This paper-based universe is both delicate and remarkably adaptable. In Tallová’s work, the possibilities of combining materials and forms seem almost limitless, allowing them to enter into entirely new relationships with the surrounding space.
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The first thing that strikes one about Lucia Tallová’s works on paper is their object-like, almost sculptural quality. She finds the source material for her collages and assemblages, which are inhabited by women and female stereotypes from a wide range of historical periods, at flea markets and in antique shops: illustrated books about the 1974 Spartakiad, fashion and film magazines from the 1950s, and publications on the temples and sculptures of Classical Antiquity. Tallová combines the facial features of postwar models with the faces of Baroque Madonnas. She allows staircases, columns, and architectural elements to emerge from the collage like images in a pop-up book. Elsewhere, assembled female bodies merge with depictions of plants, twine, fragments of mountain ranges, and planetary orbits. Branches may lie across the paper like nerve pathways or flashes of lightning; stones become ornaments in the hair on the picture surface. Everything in these collages and assemblages pushes toward three-dimensionality, toward spatial presence.
The origins of this approach lie in painting, in the use of black paint, which Tallová first applied to create her semi-abstract, cloud-like paintings and later used to transform photographs and motifs taken from books and magazines. Over time, she began treating paper as a sculptural material that she could “shape,” fixing it in place so that it retains a specific position and tension. The paper is creased or crumpled, fanned out or folded, with corners protruding like wings or spreading like undergrowth. Through this process, Tallová creates precise yet intuitive compositions—forms of montage in which images overlap, motifs connect, and hidden memories or associations are brought to the surface. At the same time, her works create the impression that the history and condition of the material itself have been preserved, as though a moment has been suspended in time.
Tallová extends this technique into her assemblages. She places collages beneath glass domes, wedges charcoal between frames, glass, and paper, and allows it to extend beyond the image and frame, growing into a new image on the wall. Abstract structures emerge from dyed, crumpled paper; paper works are combined with fragments of furniture and parts of chair legs. This paper-based universe is both delicate and remarkably adaptable. In Tallová’s work, the possibilities of combining materials and forms seem almost limitless, allowing them to enter into entirely new relationships with the surrounding space.
Further artworks from this exhibition
Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2026
Lucia Tallová: Moving Clouds
Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2026
Material and memory
Male fantasies, female bodies
Between new beginnings and decline