Eva Beresin

Eva Beresin (b. 1955, Budapest, Hungary) grew up surrounded by an extensive collection of artworks and objects amassed by her father, an obsessive collector. This early exposure provided her with a rich visual vocabulary, further shaped by fragments of 1960s counterculture that filtered through the Iron Curtain. Combined with the realities of the Soviet system, these influences underpin Beresin’s distinctive practice, characterised by a grotesque humour rooted in melancholy.

She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest before moving to Vienna in 1976. Over the past four decades, she has developed a practice centred on expressive figuration, working across media and exhibiting widely, including in independently produced, transdisciplinary projects in Vienna’s off-spaces in the early 2000s.

Since 2015, Beresin has been represented by Charim Galerie, Vienna, which that same year presented her largest project to date: an artistic interpretation of her mother’s diary, written after her liberation from Auschwitz. Engaged with only after her mother’s death, this body of work translates personal and historical memory into layered painterly narratives, reflecting on trauma and inherited history.

Beresin is also the author of Ninety-Eight Pages (Verlag für moderne Kunst). In more recent works, particularly since 2019, she paints in oil directly onto vintage fashion magazines, exploring her own body and self-perception. By placing herself—virtually—within the historical context of Auschwitz, she seeks to retrace her family’s past and initiate an imagined dialogue with those she never met. Her practice continues to embrace vulnerability with increasing openness, balancing discomfort with a deeply personal sense of resilience.