Polish-born Ewa Pachucka studied at the Lublin Art College and at the Lodz Academy of Fine in the mid 1950s, before moving to Denmark, and ultimately Australia where she lived up until her death in 2000.
He early crocheted works from the 1960s are truly her best: creating long cylindrical shapes and human forms, informed by Pop Art and most significantly George Segal. Her crocheted forms would often take the form of human beings, stuffed and installed, in strange still-life tableau installations. The Open Man (1969), a significant, early, life-size work shows her incredible mastery of crochet in creating these forms.
The Open Man will be inluded in Stavanger Art Museum's exhibition The Plastic Body: Sculpture from Poland 1960-1989. The Plastic Body will show works by several Polish artists who challenged traditional conceptions of sculpture in the 1060s and ’70s. At a time when political and patriarchal structures limited the lives of people in Poland, many artists created very radical and political works. Using experimental techniques and new materials that were often sourced from everyday life, they broke away from conventional ideas about the human body. They explored the body as a plastic material, a place for resistance, transformation and freedom.
The exhibition runs 27 September - 26 January 2025.