Line of Beauty: Young Masters People’s Choice Award Winners Exhibition

Artist Biographies

Cristina Schek (b. Transylvania)

Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind: she thinks in pictures, her imagination always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist rooted in London, Schek crafts conceptual digital works that explore identity illusion and the shifting nature of representation. Literature, cinema and art history act as her continual muses, guiding her into layered visual narratives where the self becomes both subject and symbol.

Art critic Estelle Lovatt FRSA observes her work as a powerful departure from traditional portrayals of the female muse: “Different to a man’s representation of the female, Schek inspires us to be the victor, not the victim… She creates a new, unique visual language - assertive, bold, visionary - solid enough to think in images not just of her, but of you and me. Schek’s surreal portraits carry feminist weight and contemporary resonance.”

Her work has gained international recognition, including the Young Masters Focus on the Female Art Created During Lockdown Award (2021) for Florence Lightingale, BFAMI Art Exhibition at Phillips Auction House (2022), and the 2023 W4th Plinth Award, where her 4×4m public artwork The Ceiling In The Sky was unveiled as the winning piece by Dame Siân Phillips, succeeding Sir Peter Blake’s inaugural display in the rolling public art programme curated by Abundance London. In 2025 she received First Prize in the Young Masters People’s Choice Award and a Highly Commended recognition from the Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award.

Schek’s work has been exhibited internationally at major art fairs including British Art Fair, London Art Fair, Art Miami, Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, NY Art Fair, LA Art Show, as well as in museum exhibitions at Elmbridge Museum and Kingston Museum in London. Her work is held in prestigious private collections in the UK, Europe and the United States. Her digital practice, part montage, part visual mythology, blends storytelling with subtle manipulation, revealing unseen layers of memory, identity and the beautiful strangeness of modern life.

Alexandra Baraitser (b. Cape Town, South Africa)

Based between Cambridge and London, Alexandra Baraitser is a painter whose work elevates the quiet dramaturgy of everyday objects. Her subjects, chairs, lamps, living-room furniture, bridges, office buildings and train-station seating, are contemporary still lifes of intensely designed forms. Through saturated colour and elegantly flattened space, Baraitser frees these objects from their functional constraints, transporting them into states of subtle unreality.

Though she works from closely observed photographs, her paintings reside on the edge of abstraction. Their atmosphere is liminal, suggestive of memory, emotion and the thresholds of lived experience. Figures occasionally appear, loose and ambiguous, slipping into this heightened domestic or architectural stage.

Baraitser has exhibited widely, including at Flowers Gallery (Small Is Beautiful), the Soho Open at GPS Gallery (2025), and the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition (2024–2025). She won the People’s Choice Award and was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Women’s Art Award (2025). Earlier recognition includes The Cambridge Show at Kettle’s Yard (2019), a British Council Award for a residency at Design Tasmania (2005), and the prestigious Abbey Scholarship in Painting at The British School at Rome (1996–97). She has also been shortlisted for The Mostyn Open and The Momart Fellowship (1999), exhibited at the Barbican Centre Galleries (1996), and was a finalist in the NatWest Art Prize (1998) and John Moores Painting Prize (1996). Additional honours include the Ray Finnis Trust Art Funding Award, the Florence Trust Studio Award, a Commissions East Award for mentoring with Rachel Thomas (Hayward Gallery), and a COVID-19 Emergency Funding Award (2020).

Her work has been featured in Bouyant Art, The Independent on Sunday, The Observer, The Arts Desk, and resides in collections including Clare Hall (University of Cambridge), Design Tasmania, J Sainsbury PLC, and several private collections.

About Young Masters

Founded in 2009 by gallerist Cynthia Valianti Corbett, Young Masters Art Prize is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to supporting emerging and mid-career artists who draw inspiration from art history. Through exhibitions, awards, mentoring, and international opportunities, Young Masters nurtures diverse talent and connects creative voices across generations and geographies.

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