EVA YURKOVÁ: BODY, COLOUR AND TENSION

Czech artist Eva Yurková translates the principles of traditional printmaking into a contemporary visual language. Her work Siesta (Under the Orange Tree) became part of MIO DIO, ORACULUM's first fragrance in Extrait de Parfum concentration.

Eva Yurková thinks like a printmaker, even when she is not printing. She breaks an image down into layers, fields of colour and shapes that overlap, collide and come together again. In her work, the human body is not a conventional figure placed within a landscape. It becomes another matrix, as essential as wood, paper, linoleum or clay.

Born in Svitavy in 1996, she began experimenting with linocut at the age of sixteen. She studied painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and later printmaking and graphic techniques at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. It was there that she developed an approach combining the physical process of working with materials, the precision of the graphic cut and a more intuitive use of colour. Today, she lives and works between Vienna and London.

Her practice moves between linocut, woodcut, collage, oil painting and ceramic objects. The medium changes, but the way of thinking remains. Eva creates figurative scenes in which human bodies encounter plants and environments poised somewhere between reality and construction. Flowers are not decorative elements. They carry meaning of their own, disrupting the softness of the figures and setting the rhythm of the entire composition.

At the centre of her work is the body, often female, anonymised and captured in moments of rest, physical closeness or quiet tension. Eva is not interested in straightforward narratives. Instead of presenting a complete story, she creates a situation whose meaning remains open. The viewer sees intimacy without knowing the relationship between the figures. The setting feels recognisable, yet there is no certainty that it truly exists.

This approach has led to solo exhibitions including Look Me in the Eyes, Baby and Daisies at Galerie Ernst Hilger in Vienna. Her work has also been exhibited in Linz, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Prague and Užice, Serbia. In 2024, she completed a residency at Fundació Miró Mallorca, where she worked in Joan Miró's printmaking studios.

SIESTA

Siesta (Under the Orange Tree) was created in 2025 following a trip to the heat of Seville. Made with oil and paper on a wooden panel, it depicts two figures resting beneath a tree heavy with orange fruit. At first glance, the composition appears carefree, yet its calm is not absolute. The bodies touch, bold leaves push into the foreground, and it remains unclear whether we are witnessing an ordinary moment of rest or a scene with a story of its own, inaccessible to the viewer.

It was precisely this ambiguity that brought Siesta to MIO DIO. We chose the work before we had ever met Eva in person. We did not need it to illustrate the fragrance. What drew us to it was that it shared the same principle: a striking first impression beneath which further layers gradually emerge.

Only afterwards were we introduced to Eva by Sarah Adnanová of DSC Gallery in Prague. So we did not travel to Vienna in search of a work, but to encounter one that had already been chosen for MIO DIO. In Eva's studio, we saw Siesta for the first time in its true scale, texture and colour, in the environment where it was created, surrounded by other works, sketches and materials revealing the breadth of her practice.

Siesta (Under the Orange Tree) subsequently became the visual motif for MIO DIO's outer packaging. Not as an accompanying illustration, but as an integral part of the fragrance's identity. Its saturation echoes the juicy opening of MIO DIO, while its layered composition reflects the fragrance's gradual transition towards oud, leather, amber and resins. Yet the painting and the fragrance remain independent. They do not attempt to explain one another. They simply open up more than one way of reading.

Our meeting in Vienna was not the conclusion of a finished project. Rather, it confirmed that Eva's visual world shares more with ORACULUM than a single piece of packaging could ever contain.

One thing, therefore, we know for certain: it will not end with one painting.