Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit Natalia Wróbel in her studio located in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. This has become an annual trip for me since she relocated to Spain from California in 2022. While discussing her artwork and upcoming shows, we came to realize that we have been working together for over ten years - an incredible milestone for our partnership as gallerist and artist. Natalia was the second artist we brought onto our roster in 2015 when the gallery first opened in Boston, MA. I knew of her work because we attended the same university, although we did not know each other well during our time at school. It's wonderful for me to reflect on the past ten years of working together, from countless studio visits, exhibitions, debuts of groundbreaking work, commissions (even one of our largest to date). Both of our lives have significantly changed over the past decade, but while our lives and the world around us evolve - art stays steady.
Abigail Ogilvy in the studio with Natalia Wróbel, San Sebastián, 2025.
Natalia's work has grown and evolved over the years, and I recently came across an Alice Neel quote that made me think about her work specifically: "When painting or writing are good, it's taken right out of life itself to my mind, and put into the work." Natalia's success has been driven by her constant pursuit of new places and ideas, all the while her daily life is intertwined in the resulting paintings.
When we first met in Cambridge, MA, Natalia was focused on a series of work related to portals and neural networks. Her color palette then, as today, was based on intuition - mixing paint as a physical act of meditation to prepare her for moving the brush across the canvas. These highly textured paintings evoked different reactions from the viewer, allowing them to have their own spiritual, emotional, and intellectual connection with the artwork. Later in 2017 when Wróbel was selected for inclusion at the Berlin Art Institute residency program in Germany, the work evolved. Spaces became more open and colors became darker, giving the paintings a depth that played with the viewer’s perception of foreground and background. The intensity of the residency and time change meant we were not in touch as much during her time there, but rather at the end when she could reflect on the residency in full. The new perspectives of her fellow residents and the surrounding landscape influenced the work. The musical landscape in Berlin became a strong inspiration, as did Kafka’s short stories, texts about theosophy and the writing of Rainer Maria Rilke. Wróbel described her studio practice as “painting sound.” This all found its way into the work.
Afterwards, rejoining her partner who was based in Amsterdam at the time, the paintings transformed yet again. The paintings brightened and bloomed, inevitably influenced by the abundance of flowers in and around the city, and the welcoming and warm atmosphere of the people in Amsterdam. Wróbel continued her pursuit of painting sound in Amsterdam, collaborating with local classical musicians who played live in her studio as she painted. The compositions of Gustav Mahler played a salient role in her studio soundtracks, and she frequented the Royal Concertgebouw for live orchestral concerts, whose influence found its way directly in her paintings. Her painting, Alma IV, was selected to be a key visual element in the Dutch Symphonic Cinema film “The Echo of Being” by composer/director Lucas van Woerkum, which was a modern take on the life of Gustav Mahler and centered on themes of “life, death, and the afterlife.” The influence of Berlin still on her mind, but again life in Amsterdam impacted the art.
In 2020, while the world locked down for the COVID Pandemic, Wróbel prepared to welcome her first child. Now located between both California and Santa Fe, NM nearby her and her husband’s families, the paintings flowed naturally from her brush. Forms became rounder - the movement often resembling vibrations, the brushstrokes connecting from one to the next. The energy of this new person growing within brought new life and vibrance to the work. In 2021, during her first year of motherhood, the titles remind us of how life begins, such as: "In the Beginning”, ”First Breath,” “Miracle of Being." Time both stops and moves quickly with a newborn and young child, and Wróbel explored this idea in her new work.
Natalia Wróbel, Weightless, Oil paint on linen, 29 x 40 in. diptych., 2025
Today, Wróbel is based in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, and the new paintings continue to reflect the profoundness of everyday moments and the mystery of life, and are inspired by the natural beauty of the Basque landscape- rich jewel tones of the surrounding forests and rugged coastline, the rapidly changing sky with its shifting light, earth tones of the mountains, and water elements specifically having a strong influence. The paintings are about being in the midst of transition and suggest a sense of weightlessness that is almost transcendent. Some are soft and ethereal, while others have an intricacy that captures a still moment among rapid transformation. In this way, the current paintings play with time and space, and present a strong push/pull duality which has fascinated Wróbel in her work for over a decade.
Natalia Wróbel, New painting titled "Plume," 2025.
Another painting, “Plume,” took her nearly a year to complete, but then only a couple weeks to radically transform and finalize when the perfect balance of tension and harmony found the canvas. While her work has evolved over the years, her intention of searching for the moment between stillness and surging remains. This quote was written in our 2016 artist spotlight on Natalia Wróbel: "Every stroke captures her journey from beginning to end; the movement of her arms and the intricate dance of her process are rendered in the final product."
In working with many of my artists over the last ten years of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, we share both professional and private moments. The work ethic required to maintain a studio practice is not common knowledge to our visitors and collectors - but something that I see on a daily basis. I look forward to sharing Natalia's newest works this summer in Los Angeles in our group exhibition (May - June 2025) and in a two-person presentation alongside Elizabeth King Stanton debuting in November 2025. Natalia has another exciting change coming this month, as she welcomes her second child to her family - it will be wonderful to see how the paintings develop later this year.
2018 studio visit in Boston, MA as Natalia Wróbel prepared for an upcoming solo exhibition which debuted her largest artwork to date at 27-feet wide.
Natalia Wróbel and Abigail Ogilvy in the San Sebastián studio, 2023.
Studio visit with Natalia Wróbel, 2024 in San Sebastián (with Abigail Ogilvy's 16-month-old son).
Food and drinks in San Sebastián, a city known for its food!
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