Simona Gür didn't set out to be a painter. For eleven years she worked as a flight attendant, crossing through more than ninety countries, and it was somewhere in all that movement — between airports, cultures and time zones — that painting found her.
She spent over a decade living in Dubai. These days she splits her time between Antalya, in Turkey, and Trebišov, the town in Slovakia where she grew up. That back-and-forth between places has stayed with her — it is part of why her paintings feel less like depictions of things and more like traces of energy, mood, something felt rather than observed.
She works entirely with her hands and fingers, no brushes. It is a slower, more physical way of painting, and you can feel that directness in the finished pieces — the texture, the layering, the way colour seems to have been pushed into the canvas rather than laid on top of it. She is drawn to nature and its rhythms, and to painters like Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Van Gogh and Monet. Her young daughter, whom she named Monet, has become one of her biggest sources of inspiration.
In 2019 she was selected for the London Art Biennale, which opened under the patronage of the British Royal Family. Her first solo show, in 2014 in Sharjah, was opened by a sheikha of the Al Maktoum family. She has exhibited at the Slovak Embassy in Abu Dhabi, was represented for a time by the Amsterdam Whitney Fine Art Gallery in New York, and was a finalist for both the Emerging Artist Prize in Dubai and the Luxembourg Art Prize.
Works painted before 2021 are signed Simona Jachimecová, her maiden name.
Today her paintings hang in private homes in over twelve countries — from the UAE and Slovakia to Scotland, Canada, France, Italy, Australia and the United States — as well as in the collection of the Slovak Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
Selected exhibitions
- Golden Brush Award, Dubai, UAE2014
- Serendipity — Solo Exhibition, Sharjah, UAE2015
- Elements of Love, Group Exhibition, Dubai2016
- The Big Picture, Dubai2016
- Formula 1 Art Weekend, Singapore2018
- Bloom, Solo Exhibition, Dubai2019
- London Art Biennale, London, UK2019
- Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, New York2019
- Slovak Embassy, Abu Dhabi, UAE—
Awards & nominations
- Global Art Awards — nominee, for Stormy Sea2021
- London Art Biennale — nominee, for Stormy Sea2021
- Emerging Artist Prize, Dubai — finalist—
- Luxembourg Art Prize — finalist—
Collections & publications
- Private collections in over twelve countries—
- Slovak Embassy, Abu Dhabi—
- Middle East Art Collector Book2018
- “Best of 2016”, International Emerging Artist Award2016
- Cover, Law Update magazine, Dubai2020
A calm sea never made a skilled sailor.
