Dunavi
Studio
01
About the studio
A painter of salt, weather and slow light.
Ilona Dunavi has worked from a converted bakery on the Lisbon riverfront since 2009. Her paintings are built from dozens of thin layers — oil, cold wax, marble dust and pigment she grinds herself — and they are finished only when they stop changing.
Fig. 02 — The drawing table, winter 2026
02
The story
From a borrowed easel in Vienna to a bakery by the river.
Ilona grew up in Timișoara, studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and spent her twenties restoring church frescoes — a job that taught her patience, plaster and the way pigment ages.
In 2009 she rented the ground floor of a closed bakery in Marvila for a single summer. She never left. The old bread ovens are now drying cabinets, and the salt that blooms through the walls each winter became the subject of her best-known series.
Today the studio is a team of three. Ilona paints; Tomás builds frames, crates and the occasional shelf; Clara keeps the archive, the editions and every collector’s story in order.
03
Process
Four slow steps, repeated for weeks
Step 01
Ground
Linen is sized with rabbit-skin glue and given six coats of chalk ground, sanded between each one until it feels like plaster.
Step 02
Layer
Thin glazes of oil and cold wax go down one at a time — often twenty or thirty — each left to dry for at least two days.
Step 03
Scrape
Palette knives, sandpaper and a rubber kidney take layers back again, revealing colour underneath like weathered paint on a wall.
Step 04
Rest
The finished canvas rests against the north wall for a month. If it still feels right after that, it is signed and varnished.
04
Timeline
Seventeen years in six lines
2006
Graduates from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Diploma in painting under Prof. Gunter Damisch; spends three years restoring frescoes in Transylvania.
2009
Opens the studio in a former bakery in Marvila
A summer rental that became a permanent home, with north light and two working bread ovens.
2014
First solo exhibition, ‘Iron & Salt’
Twelve paintings at Galeria Ribeira, sold out in the opening week.
2018
Begins grinding her own madder lake
A collaboration with a natural-dye grower in the Alentejo that changed her palette for good.
2024
Starts the Salt Studies series
An ongoing body of work about the salt blooms on the studio walls; twelve canvases so far.
2026
‘Low Water’ opens in Lisbon
Fourteen new works and the first edition of hand-pulled screenprints.
05
In the press
What others have written
“Dunavi paints the way weather works on a wall: patiently, and with no interest in being finished early.”
Ground Magazine — Issue 14, 2024
“Her reds are unlike any I have seen in contemporary painting. They seem to come from inside the canvas.”
The Lantern Review — London, 2025
“A quiet, serious body of work that rewards every minute you give it.”
Público, Ípsilon — Lisbon, 2026
06
The studio
Three people, one long table
Ilona Dunavi
Painter & founder
Tomás Reis
Studio manager & framer
Clara Wendt
Editions & archive
07
What we hold to
Three promises to every collector
i.
Slowness over volume
Fewer than forty originals leave the studio each year. We would rather make one good painting than three quick ones.
ii.
Editions you can trust
Every print is numbered, signed and recorded. Once an edition sells out, it is never reprinted — in any size.
iii.
Work that lives with you
Each piece comes with care notes, a certificate and a lifetime promise: we will clean, re-varnish or reframe it for free.
Come and see the work in daylight.
Studio visits on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, by appointment.