Lot 1180. 4328205. ANNA GÜNTNER (POLAND 1933-2013). “Dialog”. Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm, including frame 68 x 103 cm. Signed Anna Güntner on the reverse. Executed in 1965. PROVENANCE: Sveagalleriet, Stockholm, acquired in the late 1960s. Gunilla Laurell, Stockholm. Thence by descent. EXHIBITED: Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych, Krakow. Sveagalleriet, Stockholm, 20 April – 7 May 1967, listed under the title “Samtal”, owner Anna Güntner, cat. no. 5. Estimate 27 232 – 36 310 EUR. Stockholms Auttionsverk. 11/20/25. Sold SEK 900,000 (€81,887)

Two figures – a man and a woman – stand still in a quiet encounter, separated and yet connected by climbing vines that twist their way upward through the pictorial space. The man’s gaze is are directed toward the viewer but the woman seems immersed in an inner state – a kind of silent communication, where words appear to have given way to something deeper. In the background, a dreamlike yet structured landscape unfolds, populated by mute trees and rolling hills, painted in a restrained palette that enhances the work’s meditative tone.

Anna Güntner’s “Dialog” is a work that does not shout for attention – it whispers, and in that whisper lies the complexity of life itself. Güntner was part of a group of Polish artists who, during the 1960s, broke away from the dominant trends of abstraction in favor of a more symbolic, figurative, and simultaneously enigmatic visual language. Her works often reflect the clarity of Surrealism, yet with a distinctive, restrained sensitivity.

Born in Poznań in 1933, she was trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where she absorbed both classical techniques and modernist influences. During the 1960s and 70s, she exhibited frequently internationally, and in recent years, her art has enjoyed a well-deserved resurgence among collectors.

“Dialog” is a brilliant example of Güntner’s artistic vision, whose works exude a sense of timelessness – an aesthetic in which the dreamlike and the precise coexist. Here, two people meet, but perhaps it is also an image of an internal dialogue – between past and present, between stillness and movement, between outer life and the undercurrents beneath the surface. A work that lingers – not only as an image, but as a presence.

Dwa oleje Anny Güntner w odstępie jednego dnia. Prace artystki znajdują coraz większe zainteresowanie w Polsce a ich stosunkowo niewiele namalowała. Domom aukcyjnym bardzo podoba się to zainteresowanie.

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Lot 604. Anna Güntner 1933 – 2013. Untitled (Couple Embracing), signed Anna Güntner and dated 1974 (on the reverse), oil on canvas, 32 by 49 in. 81.3 by 124 cm. Executed in 1974. We are grateful to Janina Czarnecka and Dominika Czarnecka from Galeria Artemis for their help in researching and cataloguing this work. Provenance: DESA Foreign Trade Company, Warsaw Private Collection, Toronto (acquired from the above circa 1978). Acquired by descent from the above by the present owner. Exhibited: Cat., Kraków, Nowa Huta Cultural Centre and Galeria Artemis, Anna Güntner, Painting, 2022, p. 152, illustrated in color. Estimate $40,000 – 60,000. Sotheby’s. 11/21/25. Sold $140,000 ($177,800 bp)

In Untitled (Couple Embracing), Güntner draws upon the compositional order and fineness of detail of the Northern Renaissance, recalling in particular Hieronymus Bosch’s monumentally-scaled triptych on temptation, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Like Bosch’s vision of Adam and Eve before the Fall, Güntner’s pair inhabits a lush landscape charged with psychological undercurrents. Yet her approach is unmistakably modern: the dreamlike incongruities suggest an awareness of Surrealism, particularly the lucid enigmas of René Magritte. The man with his back turned is particularly redolent of one of Magritte’s most famous motifs of the anonymous suited man, exemplified in works such as The Son of Man. Thus, the present painting’s measured stillness and subtle estrangement places it within a lineage of European art united by themes of allegory, dream, and intellect.