Monika Zimová (born 2001) comes from Nitra, Slovakia and has been dedicating herself to art since her high school years. A key moment in her work was a childhood trip to Norway: northern lights, simple architecture, a landscape without unnecessary things — all of this has returned to her imagination since then and creates a visual language that is characteristic of her work today. Nature in her paintings is not an object — it is a friend to whom nothing needs to be said. Her paintings are hideaways: not from the world, but from its unrest. Hideaways where you can be.
Zimová’s paintings appear as fragments of a world that is too familiar to be fiction. The author uses a visual language that balances between an impressionistic atmosphere and a naïve composition. The colors are muted, the contours are soft, but light — that is what speaks the loudest. It often has a captivating, diffused quality, as if it were passing through a fog, a memory, a veil of dreamtime. The images never scream.
Why are these landscapes hideaways?
They are not landscapes you go to discover.
They are landscapes you go to disappear into.
Each scene—whether it is a house by the water, an empty road disappearing into the hills, or a room you may have never seen but know exactly what the evening sounds like in it—feels like a hideaway. Not a dangerous one, but one you want to retreat to for a moment. From the noise of the world, from time, from the need to act. They are places where it is allowed to feel—weariness, nostalgia, peace. They are not escapes from reality—they are returns to a lost version of it. As you remember it in a dream.
The dreaminess in her works is not the result of surrealist tricks—no distortions, no exaggerations. On the contrary. Everything is too normal. And it is this normality, captured with almost painful precision, that creates that silent break between what is seen and what is felt. And perhaps that is why we return to these images not with our eyes — but with an inner movement. Like when you accidentally open the door to an old room in your head at night. And nothing is missing in it.
Sofiya zelenkevich, curator
CV
EXHIBITIONS
2025, November-December – Skrýše v snoch (Hideaways in dreams), solo exhibition, Kúpele Nimnica, Nimnica, Slovakia
2025 – July – October – Skrýše v snoch (Hideaways in dreams), solo exhibition, Park Hotel Tartuf, Beladice, Slovakia
2025, June – Výtvarné Spektrum – group exhibition, Galéria Topoľčany, Topoľčany, Slovakia.
2025, May-June – Skrýše v snoch (Hideaways in dreams), solo exhibition, Smolenice castle, Smolenice, Slovakia
2025, April-May – Skrýše v snoch (Hideaways in dreams), solo exhibition, Domof Creativity, Nitra, Slovakia
2025, 13.-28. March – Výtvarné Spektrum, group exhibition, Krajské osvetové stredisko, Nitra, Slovakia.
2024, March – Výtvarné Spektrum – group exhibition, Nitra, Slovakia
November 2023 – January 2024 – Human hideaways exhibition – The gallery of The national bank of Slovakia, https://nbs.sk/o-narodnej-banke/vystavy/
2023, June – ABASCUS virtual exhibition, UK. www.freshsalad.cargo.site
2023, May – Výtvarné spektrum – group exhibition, Topoľčany, Slovakia
2023, March – Region art contest – group exhibition, Nitra, Slovakia
2023, January – “Human hideaways”(“Ľudské skrýše”) solo exhibition at the regional Library Krajská knižnica Karola Kmeťka v Nitre
2021, September – Dom umenia (House of Arts), Piešťany, Slovakia, group exhibition “Immersed in landscapes (Ponorení v krajinách”
2020, March – Inšpirované Škandináviou (Inspired by Scandinavia) solo exhibition at Ponitrianske múzeum v Nitre (Ponitrianske museum in Nitra)
2020, Máj – Pálffyho palác in Bratislava (Pallfy pallace in Bratislava), group exhibition “Under the trees”
2018, November – Art cafe, Nitra, solo exhibition of selected work.
2018, June – Tralaškola art school absolvent´s exhibition, https://www.tralaskola.sk/galeria/vernisaz-1262018
AWARDS
2025, June – Výtvarné Spektrum (regional level) – recieved honorable mention, Topoľčany, Slovakia.
2025, March – Region art (local level) – recieved honorable mention, Nitra, Slovakia.
2023, May – Výtvarné spektrum (Art spectrum) regional contest, recieved honorable mention, proceeded to the national level of this contest.
2023, March – Region art, local level, recieved honorable mention.
PUBLICATIONS
2025, April – article in NitraK, https://www.nitrak.sk/clanky/5479/nitranka-monika-zimova-prinasa-do-mesta-spomienky-na-platne-jej-vystavu-skryse-v-snoch-najdete-v-domof-creativity
2024, April – Kunstartum, online blog about art and architecture, https://kunstartum.com/tvorba-monika-zimova/
2023, November – Article in Beevam magazine https://beevam.sk/2023/11/07/rozhovor-s-talentovanou-maliarkou-monikou-zimovou-rozpravam-sa-s-prirodou-cez-obrazy/
2023, March – Artist Talk Magazine – artwork featured, page 132, https://issuu.com/artisttalkmagazine/docs/artist_talk_magazine_issue_24/132
2022, November – VITALITA magazine interview, online version here: https://www.evitalita.sk/news/carovne-miesta/
2023, March – Artist Talk Magazine short article, https://www.artisttalkmagazine.com/landscape-magic-tucked-away-in-daydreams-monika-zimovas-artwork
OTHER
2022, July – 2024 – Saga Store, Reykjavik – artwork products sold at a busy tourist shop in the centre of Reykjavik.
2019, June – Soňa Mrázová´s plein air painting workshop in Lukáčovce, Slovakia.
