Aspen Art Museum

Maja Ruznic (b. 1983, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a New Mexico-based painter whose work fuses personal narrative, psychoanalysis, and mythology into paintings which feature ghostlike, diluted forms and vivid colorfields. Working on both immense and small scales, Ruznic extracts order from intense layers of color, often revealing geometric patterns and spectral figures. Painting variably with oils and gouache, Ruznic also creates work of deep abstraction, distinguished by diaphanous passages of jewel-toned pigment. Ruznic’s practice is also informed by her studies, from Slavic shamanism and pagan ritual to Jungian psychoanalysis, Sumerian myth and meditation. Imbued with a discordant beauty, Ruznic’s compositions are guided by a deep intentionality, yet emerge without a premeditated outcome.

Ruznic’s work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, Texas; The Rachofsky House, Dallas, Texas; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; and the Jiménez–Colón Collection Collection, Puerto Rico. Recent exhibitions include the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2022); Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2022); Karma, New York, New York (2022); Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato, Italy (2021); and Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico (2021).