Maja Berezowska is best known for an erotic art that combines sensuality with humour, elegance, and an unmistakable lightness of touch. This selection of paintings and drawings shows how broad that achievement was. Her preferred media included pen and ink, brush and watercolour, and she could move effortlessly between delicate linear studies and richly coloured compositions. Her line is supple and economical, describing bodies, clothing and gestures with remarkable fluency; even her most elaborate scenes retain the immediacy of a drawing.

Eroticism is the dominant theme, but Berezowska’s lovers are rarely solemn or portentous. They kiss, embrace, flirt, make love, and lounge together in bedrooms, gardens, on beaches and in imagined landscapes. The lovers in Berezowska's drawings are often caught in moments of relaxed intimacy, with a sense of pleasure that extends beyond the sexual act to clothing, decoration, food, drink and the surrounding world. Her women are usually presented as active participants rather than passive objects, and her treatment of female sexuality was unusually frank for its time. Humour is never far away – a theatrical costume, exaggerated pose or incongruous detail can turn an erotic scene into a small comedy.

The range of subjects is considerable. Alongside intimate encounters are portraits, social scenes, theatrical designs, historical and literary subjects, and studies of everyday life. Several works here demonstrate her delight in costume and performance, while others are explicitly sexual. The recurring interest in lovers and the human body is a strong thread throughout her work, whether the setting is contemporary, historical, mythological or entirely fanciful.

This selection of Berezowska’s work starts with some of the 1930 Decameron plates, then works chronologically through her long and varied artistic career, ending with a few of her strong monochrome ink drawings.