Eva Helene Pade
Eva Helene Pade was born in 1997 in Denmark and lives and works in Paris. She graduated with a BFA and an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2024. Her paintings draw upon a lineage of Northern European figurative artists, including Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Otto Dix in her investigation of the complexities of human relationships. In her compositions, dreamlike, open-ended narratives are fused with a sense of the mythological.
Eva Helene Pade is participating in the fifth edition of the Reiffers Art Prize, Tinkering with the unknown.
Exhibition view of "Tinkering with the unknown"
Eva Helene Pade, 2026
Exhibition view of "Tinkering with the unknown"
Eva Helene Pade, 2026
Knækkede stråler (Broken rays)
Eva Helene Pade, 2025
Bid (Bite)
Eva Helene Pade, 2025
Skygge over mængden (Shadow above the crowd)
Eva Helene Pade, 2025Biography
Described by Pade as a ‘surrender to the more metaphysical parts of the paintings,’ her work pushes beyond the figurative towards the transcendental as she proposes a new painterly approach to depicting female
embodiment today.
Represented as a site of empowered agency, the female body is central to her practice. Starting as ‘coordinates’ on the canvas, her figures emerge from layer upon layer of paint into clusters and crowds, or are singled out from these configurations in meditative depictions of individuals. Their faces stare out defiantly from the canvases, materialising from fluid compositions or dissolving into rich, jewel-toned strokes of paint. Full-length, interlocking figures dominate indeterminate sites, often appearing not only expressionless but featureless or entirely covered – emotion conveyed through their stance or contortion. Limbs connect or multiply with resonating blurred edges and areas of the cotton canvas are left exposed, inviting myriad readings. These forms extend a sense of the self beyond the body and open up spaces with which she ‘allows for the connections we all have. Where you have the sacrifice, dreams and hopes.’
Early recognition for her work includes the prestigious Young Talent Prize from the Carlsberg Foundation in 2017. Since then, she has exhibited her work both in solo and group shows across Europe and the United States, and has participated in significant curatorial projects including Uno, Nessuno, Centomila at Palazzo Capris, Turin (2021) and Forårsudstillingen at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2021). In April 2025 ARKEN Museum [of Contemporary Art], Ishøj, Denmark, staged the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, curated by Rasmus Stenbakken.