Julie Stavianis Špačková

Monkeys, dancers, twins, a man in a tie. Fragments of ordinary days assembled into large canvases full of colour, often painted in a single evening. Julie Stavianis Špačková (b. 1999) is a Prague painter who made her own way onto the art scene: through Instagram, a studio of her own in the Old Town and exhibitions she initially organised without a gallery behind her. Today she shows at DSC Gallery and at Prague Art Fair. Let us look together at why her work is worth following.

A path without a beaten track

Julie Špačková was born in Prague in 1999. She has painted since childhood and, as she says in an interview for Elle, art is the main dominant of her life. She studied at a secondary art school in Prague-Žižkov and then applied to the Academy of Fine Arts several times without success. Many young artists would have been discouraged. She kept painting.

The turning point came, paradoxically, during lockdown. She began to create more and to share her paintings on Instagram, where they met with a greater response than she had expected. In 2020 she co-founded Fake Gucci Studio in Prague's Old Town, a studio and at the same time a venue for pop-up exhibitions. She arranged the exhibitions herself, with no professors and no gallery. She also opened the studio to people interested in her paintings, who could come and see the canvases in person.

She did eventually get into the Academy of Fine Arts. From 2022 to 2024 she studied in the painting studio led by Robert Šalanda and Lukáš Machalický. Many of the most distinctive names in young Czech painting have emerged from Šalanda's studio. Even so, Julie Špačková has kept what sets her apart: the spontaneity of someone who came to painting by her own route.

Markers, sprays and then oil

She began mainly with markers and spray paint, tools close to street art. Gradually she moved to oil painting, which she now also combines with pastel. An example is the painting Portrét ve tmě (2025), oil and pastel on canvas.

Her way of working is spontaneous. She chooses colours according to the mood of the particular day and can fill an entire canvas in a single evening. Painting is also, in her words, a release, a way of getting emotions out. The result is expressive painting (a style that favours the expression of feeling over a faithful depiction of reality) with strong colour and a quick, energetic hand.

Interestingly, she is inspired by minimalists (artists who work with the fewest possible shapes and colours). Yet she assembles their economical elements into a result with the opposite effect: small, simple fragments build into a dense, lively whole on a large format.

The painting as a personal diary

What will you see in Julie Stavianis Špačková's paintings? Everyday situations, animals, figures and objects. Her canvases work as a personal diary. She does not address politics, gender issues or ecology, as she openly admits. She is interested in psychology and sociology, that is, in how people live, act and what they go through.

Look at the titles of her newer paintings from 2025: Cuban Dancer, Peruan Dancer, Twins, Monkeys, Wild Fantasy, Man with a tie. Dancers, animals, portraits. It is as if she painted the people and creatures who caught her attention during the day, and from their gestures assembled a map of the world of her own.

Try pausing in front of one of her paintings and searching for the individual fragments. Which detail caught your eye first? Is it a figure or an animal? And what mood might have prevailed on the day the painting was made? That is precisely the charm of diary painting: every canvas is a record of a single moment.

Exhibitions from skatepark to DSC Gallery

Her first exhibitions took place outside traditional galleries: in a skatepark, in cafés and in pop-up spaces. In 2020 she created the installation Kokón for the Tree festival, and a year later she exhibited at the Cafedu café, at Yescafe studio and at Fake Gucci Studio. Hidden Gallery in Prague, Spot in Brno, Galerie současného umění Prostějov and the ArtNumber23 exhibition in Athens, Greece, followed. Her first solo exhibition was in 2022 at Spaza place in Prague 7.

In 2023 she appeared at Prague Art Fair in the Clam-Gallas Palace with the M6 gallery stand, at the exhibition Wildly and purely in the Hrzán Palace, at Spaghetti in Hradec Králové and at From the street at the M6 gallery. 2024 brought two solo exhibitions: Saturday Night Fever at Ex Post in Prague and Snipets of summer romance at the grao gallery in Bratislava. She also took part in the group exhibition Two Rooms at the chateau in Moravská Třebová and in the Salon of the M6 gallery.

In 2025 DSC Gallery included her in the debut project of the DSC Depository cycle, titled Krajinou sám na trajektorii pohybu. Alongside Jan Soumar, Olga Krykun and Anna Treterová, she presented work by a generation the gallery calls post-digital. The exhibition dealt with landscape as a space of self-discovery and the need for distance from constant connection.

Painter and curator

Julie Špačková does not devote herself only to her own work. She is part of the curatorial collective 3Kurátorky, and in 2023 she sat on the selection committee of the open call of the CAFEDU Art Space gallery, which chose artists for its exhibitions. She has also donated her paintings to charity auctions in aid of the Diakonie ČCE humanitarian centre.

As a painter who began without institutional support, she knows well how hard it is to break through. She holds that art should be open to everyone. “Art should be accessible to all,” she told Elle. She would like to exhibit outside Prague as well, and in unconventional spaces, perhaps in a botanical garden.

Where to see her and why to follow her

Her paintings are already in private collections, and within a few years she has gone from pop-up exhibitions to the renowned DSC Gallery and Prague Art Fair. It is a story of perseverance that is not often seen in contemporary Czech art.

Why follow Julie Stavianis Špačková? She has a recognisable, energetic hand, the courage to work with colour and large formats, and a personal, diary-like approach you can easily identify with. For collectors looking for expressive painting by the younger generation with an authentic story, this is a name worth attention.

If you are planning a trip to Prague, follow the programme of DSC Gallery and the M6 gallery and see her canvases up close. You will see how much life can be fitted into a single evening with paint. The more art around us, the richer life is.