Ania Gola-Kumor was born in Warsaw, Poland. She received her MFA from Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. She came to the US in 1982. She has shown her work in the US and internationally; solo and group shows in Denver, Santa Fe, LA, New York, London, and Toronto, among others, and is currently represented by Sandra Phillips Gallery in Denver. She is a Professor at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
Gola-Kumor’s work has received critical acclaim over the years and was published in Colorado Abstract, Painting and Sculpture by Fresco Fine Art Publications, Ilc, January 2009. She was chosen as one of 14 women to be in the show Women of Influence: Colorado Artist and Curators, Arvada Center in 2012. Her exhibit, “Moving Paint”, was recently awarded by Westword Magazine as Best 2014 Solo Gallery Show in Denver.
Ania Gola-Kumor. CV
EDUCATION
1980 M F A Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland
Areas of Concentration: Painting, Exhibition Design and Installation.
Graduated with the Award of Excellence
EXHIBITIONS
2018 Abstract Immersion, Sandra Philips Gallery.
2018 Pink Progression Shows, Boulder Public Library, Denver Public Library, CVA.
2017 Solo Show, Sandra Phillips Gallery.
2016 Perfect Voices, Reopening at our new location, Sandra Phillips Gallery.
2016 Center for Visual/Metropolitan State University, Colorado Women in Abstraction, Denver, Colorado.
2015 Painted Paper, movements through collage: works by Cecelia Feld and Ania Gola-Kumor, BMOCA at
Macky Auditorium, CU Boulder, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
2014 Blurred Lines, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Free Association Links Artists Ania Gola-Kumor, Sandra Kaplan and
Barbara Groh
2014 Drawing Exchange – From Here and There: Drawings from Colorado to Wales at Elysium Gallery and
From Here and There: Drawings from Colorado and Wales at Hatton Gallery, Department of Art and Art
History, CSU.
2014 MOVERS AND SHAPERS: COLORADO CONTEMPORARY WOMEN, Sandra Philips Gallery, Denver.
2014 Directions in Abstraction at EDGE Gallery.
2013 TOTAL ABSTRACTION, 56 story ART SPACE at REPUBLIC PLAZA
2013 Solo show Moving Paint at Sandra Philips Gallery, April 2013
2013 Philip Stele Foundation, donation to the auction, May 3013
2013 New beginnings, Gallery Group Show, Sandra Philips Gallery.
2012 Women of Influence: Colorado Artist and Curators, Arvada Center
2012 2012 Biennial Faculty Exhibition, Together, Now showing in the Philip J. Steele Gallery
2012 Colorado Abstract Expressionism, Kirkland Museum
2012 Philip Stele Foundation, donation to the auction
2011 Time Travel – Decorative Art from the Kirkland Museum at Arvada Center for Art and Humanities
2010 Solo show Abstraction, Sandra Philips Gallery
2010 Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kirkland Museum Collection: 100 Years of Colorado Art
2010 Arvada Center for Art and Humanities, The Kirkland Museum Collection: 100 Years of Colorado Art
2010 Art District Best Of, on Santa Fe drive in 2009
2010 Small Works Exhibit, Sandra Philips Gallery
2009 SIDEBESIDE, Gallery T
2009 Bollywood Night: A DAM Contemporaries Fundraiser, Denver Art Museum
2009 Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art
2009 Sandra Philips Gallery, Denver, Colorado
2009 Metro State College Center for Visual Arts, Denver, Colorado Abstract Painting and Sculpture book show
2008 Abstraction, Sandra Philips Gallery, Denver, Colorado
2007 Emil Nelson Gallery, Santa Monica, California.
2006 Arvada center, Colorado
1998 Philip J.Steel Gallery, Annual Faculty Show, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
2001 Solo show Mixed Media Big and Small, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver
2000 The collage principle, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver.
1999 Colorado Abstraction, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada.
1999 Gallery 234, University of Wyoming, Laramie.
1999 Contemporary Colorado Juried Invitational, Western Colorado Center For The Arts.
1999 Alliance for Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, Studio Visit.
1998 Opening show, Only Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Collins.
1998 Solo show, Tointon Gallery, Union Colony Civic Center, Greeley.
1998 Harmony Park, Fort Collins.
1998 Tenth Annual Colorado Art Education Association Exhibit, Denver.
1998 Art Faculty Show, Hatton Gallery, Colorado State University.
1997 Harmony Park, Grand Opening, Fort Collins.
1997 Solo Show, Directions Gallery, Art Department, Colorado State University.
1997 Annual Colorado Art Education Association Exhibit, Denver.
1996 Edith Lambert Galleries, Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
1996 Canyon Wind Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1995 S R W Gallery, Small Work Show, Montecito, California.
1995 Gallery, First Prize, Tucson, Arizona.
1995 Inkfish Gallery, Denver, Colorado.
1994 One West Art Center, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1994 Solo show, Bas Bleu Theater Company, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1993 Lincoln Center, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1990 Solo show, Gallery Groedl, Toronto, Canada.
1989 Calligrammes Gallery, Ottawa, Canada.
1989 Quan Schieder, Toronto, Canada.
1988 Solo show, Santa Fe Gallery, London, England.
1988 Sena Galleries East, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
1987 Colorado All- Media Juried Exhibition, Boulder Center for Visual Arts, Boulder.
1987 Artists’ Liaison, Santa Monica, California.
1987 Twelfth Kansas National Small Painting Drawing and Print Exhibition, Kansas State University.
1987 Fred Dorfman Contemporary Art Publishers, New York.
1987 William Havu Fine Arts, Denver, Colorado.
1987 Annual Fort Collins Jured Exhibition, First Prize.
1986 Greater Fort Collins Juried Exhibition, PowerPlant Visual Arts Center, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1986 Solo show, Curfman Gallery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1985 Abacus Gallery, Denver, Colorado.
1985 Art Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1985 Parker- Blake, Denver, Colorado.
1985 Neville- Sargent Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.
1986 Annual Art Mart American, A National Show, Jurors award, Greeley.
1984 Solo show, Gallery East, Loveland, Colorado.
1984 Another Great Love Affair, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.
1984 Environments, Cohen Gallery, Denver, Colorado.
1984 Solo show, Mariani Gallery, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado.
1984 Art Marathon, University Bank and Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1983 Fabric Fibers Paper and Clay, Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1983 Art for Eclectic Collectors, Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1983 Summerstock, Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1983 Solo show, Gray Skies and Sunshine, Anderson & Anderson Gallery, Loveland, CO.
1981 Gallery Mokotow, Warsaw, Poland.
REPRESENTED by Sandra Philips Gallery, Denver
http://www.thesandraphillipsgallery.com/artists/AniaKumor/index.html
PREVIOSLY REPRESENTED BY
Only Contemporary Art, Fort Collins. Inkfish Gallery, Denver. Calligrammes Gallery, Ottawa, Canada.Gallery Groedl, Toronto , Canada. Quan / Schieder, Toronto, Canada. Santa Fe Gallery London, England. Sena Galleries East, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Anderson & Anderson, Loveland, Colorado. Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins. PowerPlant Visual Arts Center. Cohen Gallery, Denver. Abacus Gallery, Denver.Gallery East, Loveland. Parker Blake, Denver. William Havu Fine Arts, Denver. Neville - Sargent, Chicago, Illinois. Fred Dorfman Contemporary Art Publishers, New York. Edith Lambert Galleries Ltd, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Harmony Park, Fort Collins
PUBLICATIONS, PERIODICALS AND CATALOGS
Pink Progression Shows: https://pinkprogression.wordpress.com/news/
Michael Paglia “Rewiew: Moving paint II Gives Ania Gola-Kumor her Due”
Westword Magazine, November 14,2017.
Ania Gola-Kumor is one of Colorado’s best abstract painters, but she is inexplicably also one of the most underappreciated. Her latest efforts are on view in Moving Paint II: Ania Gola-Kumor, a handsome and tight solo now at the Sandra Phillips Gallery. All of the paintings in this show were completed this past summer and fall, though a handful are earlier works that Gola-Kumor wasn’t happy with, and so, in her words, she “fixed them.”
Originally from Poland, Gola-Kumor has had a long career in Colorado. In 1982, she essentially defected from her native land, then still under Soviet influence. That move was facilitated by John Sorbie, the late and legendary poster designer who taught at Colorado State University. Gola-Kumor had just graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1980, and she picked up where she’d left off as soon as she arrived in Colorado.
These new pieces build on the abstract language that Gola-Kumor has been developing for the past thirty years, but she’s tweaked it subtly, making everything look fresh and different. Long interested in being a colorist, Gola-Kumor has brought new shades to the visual conversation. Although the Sandra Phillips show has not been installed to lay out the way these paintings developed out of one another, it’s possible to follow Gola-Kumor’s progression anyway, since she’s numbered them.
The first two paintings seem to be centering exercises for her colorist tendencies: “#1 Untitled” is almost colorless, while “#2 Untitled” is covered in dark and murky shades. In “#3 Untitled,” Gola-Kumor’s palette takes off with a lot of pink, a tint she’s only rarely used, accented by a super-toned-up yellow. (Other paintings include orange and a greenish silver.) The formal elements of “#3 Untitled” feature a dizzying array of automatist marks, which the artist explains come from her memories of things she’s seen that she translates onto the canvases through intuitive markings.
Several of the new paintings are large horizontals, such as “#6 Untitled,” which is covered with flowing arching marks laid laterally across the painting and on top of one another, so that the resulting abstraction is somehow evocative of a view of the mountains. Despite the density of the layers and the apparent frenzy of brushwork necessary to make all those shapes, Gola-Kumor says she finds these would-be vistas to be ultimately relaxing in appearance, and it’s easy to see what she means.
Best Gallery Show- Solo Denver 2014, Westword Magazine
Michael Paglia These new solos from two of Colorado's best abstract artists will make you think, Westword Magazine, May 16 2013.
All of these thoughts came to my mind as I contemplated a pair of remarkable solos by two of Colorado's best abstract artists, both of whom happen to be teachers at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.
First up is Ania Gola-Kumor: Moving Paint, at the Sandra Phillips Gallery. Born in Poland and educated at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art and at Moscow's College of Art and Industry, Gola-Kumor first came to Colorado in 1982 — right after leaving Poland — but didn't settle here permanently until the late '80s. I first encountered her work in the 1990s, at the long-shuttered Inkfish Gallery, and have since come to recognize it by the lusciousness of her pigments, the exquisite density of her surfaces, and her never-off though instinctually generated palettes.
In fact, Gola-Kumor's work seems to follow a coherent trajectory, so that a Gola-Kumor is unmistakably hers. This latest group of paintings bears that out, though Gola-Kumor says the pieces actually represent something of a new beginning. The reason is because she was forced to give up painting for a year after falling off of a ladder in 2011 while painting — her kitchen ceiling, not a canvas — and shattering her knee and foot. What followed was a series of surgeries. Then, on New Year's Eve 2011, she'd had enough and began working again. In a frenzy, she did sixty — count 'em, sixty — works on paper in watercolor, oil stick and oil bar. Though they are very obviously related to the subsequent paintings, these works on paper weren't preparatory studies for them. The show at Phillips includes a grid of twenty of these gorgeous little abstracts.
The works on paper reveal that for Gola-Kumor, painting was like riding a bike: She got back on and pedaled away. She then created twenty large paintings in the course of a single year, with some anchoring the Phillips show and others viewable in the back room. The first to be completed, "Untitled #11," has seven distinct layers, according to the artist, and as crowded with painterly gestures as it is, it's hard to doubt her. Although it looks like there's some not-quite-discernable subject matter underneath, Gola-Kumor says there isn't. Still, she says the work is abstract rather than being non-objective, with the shapes meant to evoke the idea of movement — something that had special resonance for her after her injury. The palette is wonderful, with lots of greens juxtaposed with purples, and earth tones that are unified by the webs of dark lines dividing up the colors. Gola-Kumor says that she rarely, if ever, used green before, but that it was associated with healing and thus reflected her actual experience at the time that she created it. But don't worry: There are several examples of work in her classic ivory-tan palette, as well as her signature red one.
Philip Steele Foundation blog future: http://pjsteelearts.blog.com/2013/02/26/6/
Cover of Arvada Center monthly magazine, featuring Women of influence show, 2012
Michael Paglia, Denver’s art districts are mostly growing concerns, Westword, November 2010
(…)That’s the same query I’d make about the artist whose solo, Abstraction 2010: Ania Gola-Kumor, is on view at the nearby Sandra Phillips Gallery. Gola-Kumor has been exhibiting in Denver for decades; her signature style is all-over abstractions formed from clearly defined shapes that fill the picture plane to the edges, like the pieces of an enigmatic puzzle. Her painterly technique is breathtaking, with lots of overpainting in broken passages across the picture that is emphasized by a sense for drawing, as though Gola-Kumor had scribbled across the canvases and then carefully filled in the resulting automatist forms with layer upon layer of pigment — which is precisely what she did. The automatism links her to abstract expressionism, while the meditative followup makes her approach distinctly different. Gola-Kumor’s palettes are remarkable and unerring in their elegant balance. The paintings in this group are closely associated formally, but not in terms of their colors, which, though defined by a limited range within each piece, encompass the entire spectrum of color across the series. Some are filled with hot, toned-up reds and oranges, while others are in cool, recessive shades of creams and greens; all are untitled.
Michael Paglia, Now Showing, Capsule reviews of current exhibits, Westword, July 2009
Sidebeside. Standard art fare during the summer involves group shows made up of artists from a gallery’s stable. Ron Judish, director of Gallery T, has taken this old chestnut and put an interesting twist on it. For Sidebeside, he has asked each of the artists represented by T to select another who isn’t and then present the ad hoc pairs together. Some of the pairings, such as Jeff Wenzel’s selection of Ania Gola-Kumor, were inspired; the artists’ pieces look gorgeous together.
Kyle MacMillan, Galleries put focus on abstract artists, Denver Post, February 2009.
The Sandra Phillips Gallery is showcasing five participants in “Colorado Abstract,” including Ania Gola-Kumor, one of the standouts. She possesses an immediately recognizable style that mediates between abstraction and representation, line and form.
The Polish native’s paintings have an intriguing retro feel, and their style is no doubt influenced by her studies with members of the Polish Colorists. A consistent element in all of them is her emphatic sectionalizing of her compositions.
In most of the displayed works, which date from 1987 and 2006, Gola-Kumor suggests a scene that is abstracted just enough to make a firm identification of subject matter impossible. An exception is the red-dominated “Untitled” (2006), which comes the closest to pure abstraction.
Fresco Fine Art Publications, Ilc, Colorado Abstract, Painting and Sculpture, page 170 – 175, January 2009.
Mary Chandler, A quick course in abstraction, Rocky Mountain News, June 26, 2008.
To begin, Perisho has included work by Ania Gola-Kumor, a long-time, well- respected teacher at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Gola-Kumor showed widely in the 1980s, but then went under the radar when it came to exhibiting her work. The community should be glad she is back, represented here by two works in watercolor and oil pastel on paper and three extraordinary oils on canvas (plus, more recently, a small bin of other pieces). The smaller watercolors, toward the front of the gallery, are dense, compact and focused on containment within the frame. Her nearby paintings, however, are more expansive, deep and almost cellular in nature. Line and color hold sway in these large, untitled paintings, bracing and balanced works that are all-consuming and hard to pull away from.
Michael Paglia, Little Pleasures, Westword, June 5, 2008.
The first stop is Sandra Phillips Gallery, where a show with the generic title Abstraction opened a couple of weeks ago. The exhibit was organized by Sally Perisho, who used to be the director of Metropolitan State’s Center for Visual Art and now works with the MCA. The show begins with a group of abstracts by Ania Gola-Kumor. Though she had her first exhibit in town in 1982, Gola-Kumor isn’t well known around here, and I think of her as the best unknown artist in Denver. She’s originally from Poland and studied at Warsaw’s Academy of the Fine Arts, where she earned her MFA; she also attended the College of Art and Industry in Moscow. During the last 25 years, she’s shown her paintings in such far-flung places as Santa Fe, New York and London. I first became aware of her work in the 1990s, when I saw her dense and heavily painted abstracts at the now-long-closed Inkfish Gallery; later, I caught an exhibit of her equally compelling mixed-media collages mounted as a wall-sized installation at the Phillip Steele Gallery on the old campus of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. “I’ve been hiding,” Gola-Kumor said, “but this show has brought me back out.” Truthfully, she’s been hiding in plain sight, as she’s taught foundations and drawing at RMCAD for the past decade. In the Sandra Phillips show, she’s represented by three monumental paintings and two small collages, all of which are untitled, because Gola-Kumor doesn’t want to add anything to the visual experience and doesn’t want to suggest to viewers what they should see. All of these pieces are spectacular. The paintings, more than the collages, seem to be based on something seen in reality, like a room, but Gola-Kumor has abstracted them to such an extent that they are unrecognizable.
100 Creative Drawing Ideas, Anna Held Audette, Shambhala, Boston & London, 2005, p.144-145
Best salute to Colorado’s contemporary art scene, Michael Paglia, Westword,, September 27, 2001
Colorado Abstraction: 1975‑1999 Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, article in the catalog
Michael Paglia, Westword, September 27, 2001: Beyond Collective Cultures is Ania Gola‑Kumor: Mixed Media Big and Small.
Gola‑Kumor is also a respected art teacher, right here at RMCAD. I often think of Gola‑Kumor as one of the region’s best and most overlooked abstract painters, and this show is made up of a gorgeous group of her paintings. Gola‑Kumor puts on layer after layer of pigment, with the lower layers, which consist of bright colors, peeking through to the surface in places. The top layers are monochromatic, with dry and neutral tones such as cream and brown predominating. Another feature of Gola‑Kumor’s work is the use of clearly defined shapes that are expressive though still geometric, as in “Untitled” (seen above). There are a lot of marvelous paintings here, including the remarkable “Untitled #16,” in which fifty very small works on paper are hung together as a single work, making it big and small at the same time.
Michael Paglia, Time Flies by and Time Marches On. Colorado’s abstract art tradition continues. Westword, September 23, 1999
Ania Gola-Kumor is another artist who has been exhibiting since the 1980s. Her work is the heir to abstract expressionism as well as other abstract styles, notably cubism, at least in the case of “Composition,” an oil on canvas from 1988. In this piece, she uses a creamy monochrome color scheme to create roughly geometric shapes that overlap one another. On the adjacent wall is the elegant “Untitled,” a group of eighteen mixed-media collages done in 1997 and 1998. The collages, which have been individually framed in aluminum and hung in a vertical grid, are dark and lush, characteristics that are offset by the gleam of the aluminum frames.
Jeff Bradley, Abstractions That Work, Denver Post, September 10,1999, page E-28.
Jane Fudge, Colorado Abstraction, catalog Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Sep. 1999.
Interview and additional materials posted on audio/video materials, September - November 1999, in Arvada Center.
Five drawings and collages were published in Nieve Roja Review, Colorado State University’s Online Literary Magazine. 1999.
Stephanie Duke, Bolder Ways, Greeley Tribune, July 1998.
Events include sculpture dedication gallery opening, Valley Window Reporter-Herald, October 1997.
Margaret Regan, Size Doesn’t Matter, Arts & Leisure review, Tucson, Arizona, January 1996.
Lincoln Center Marquee, Fort Collins, Colorado, September- December 1993.
Kathy Erbacher, Appreciation for abstract, The Coloradoan, December 1993.
Creative Arts Symposium 1993, catalog jurors information CSU, April 1993.
Absorb, Loveland Museum/ Gallery Newsletter, June 1993, page 5.
Opening show, by Max Wykes-Joyce, Arts Review, London, England, May 1988.
ARTS NEWS magazine, January 1988, page 56.
ARTS SPACE Southwestern Contemporary Art Quarterly, Winter 1987/1988, page 6.
Power Line, The newsletter for PowerPlant Visual Art Center, April 1987, page 3.
Artist’s Liaison 1987, catalog, Santa Monica, California 1987.
Nature, rich inspiration source for Ania Gola- Kumor paintings, Fort Collins Business World, December 1987.
Kathleen Halloran, From Poland to Purple, The Coloradoan, April 29, 1986.
Steve Porter, Polish Painter no teaches Art, Triangle Review, October 1985.
Phillis Walbye, Work of Polish artist Gola moves from dark to bright, Reporter- Herald, Loveland, April 1983.
Valerie Moses, Landscape influences Polish artist, The Coloradoan, June 1983.
Phillis Walbye, Ania Gola- Kumor shown at Gallery East, Reporter- Herald, Loveland Daily, October 1984.
Another Great Love Affair, catalog, Denver Art Museum, 1984, page 8.
NEWSLETTER, Alliance for Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, March 1984.
Marathon for the Arts Exhibition, catalog, Fort Collins, Colorado, 1984.
Max Price, Environment is fascinating at Cohen Gallery, Denver Post, April 1984.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
1998 – now Professor, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Foundations Studies and Fine Arts
1996 - 1998 Adjunct Faculty, Colorado State University.
1996 - 1996 Faculty, Front Range Community College.
1982 - 1987 Assistant to the Director for Rosalyn Spencer in Horizons Gallery and Powerplant Visual Arts
Center.
1985 - 1988 Painting instructor, PowerPlant Visual Arts Center, Fort Collins.
1993 - 1995 Lincoln Center, Visual Arts Selection Committee, Fort Collins.
1983 –now Juror
EXHIBITION DESIGN
1988 - 1989 Forrec International Corporation, Toronto, Canada.
1985 - 1988 PowerPlant Visual Arts Center, Fort Collins.
1982 - 1985 Horizons Gallery, Fort Collins, Colorado.
1984 Art of Peace, Fort Collins and Denver, Colorado.
1979 Another Book for the Child, part of the International Book Fair, Warsaw, Poland.
1979 Exhibition design for a private collector in Pertykozy, Poland.
INTERIOR DESIGN
1988 - 89 Moorhead Fleming,Toronto, Canada. Mediterranean Village shopping center in Gateshead,
England.
1980 - 82 Experimental Studios of the Academy of Fine Arts,Warsaw, Poland.
STAGE DESIGN
1979 Poetry evening of Jan Kochanowski, National Philharmony, Warsaw. Poland.
1980 - 82 Warsaw Autumn of Poetry, Stara Prochownia Theater, Warsaw, Poland.
MEMBERSHIPS
Association of Polish Artist and Designers, since 1980.
College Art Association, since 1996.
Foundations in Art: Theory and Education, since, 1996