Alexandra Baraitser (b. 1971, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Cambridge and London, U.K. She recently was joint winner of The People's Choice Award and was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Woman’s Art Award at the Young Masters Art Prize (2025), and has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition (2025, 2024) and Kettle’s Yard (2019). Earlier awards include the Abbey Scholarship in Painting at the British School at Rome (1996–97), the NatWest Art Prize finalist (1998), and exhibitions at the Barbican Centre Galleries (1996) and the John Moores Painting Prize (1996).
Her paintings draw on 20th-century modernist design, the Bauhaus movement, and 1950s interiors. Using magazine clippings and photography as sources, she builds images on a white ground with thin layers of oil paint, creating glossy, translucent surfaces. While rooted in figuration, her work has gradually shifted from photorealism toward abstraction, emphasising light, shade, and fluid brushwork.