Paulina Olowska (Poland b.1976) --- --- Cake (Torcik) 2010
During Poland’s Communist era (1945-1989), the state deemed modernist abstraction unacceptable. The censored visual vocabulary consequently circulated in secret through samizdat (or banned) publications. In 2010, Olowska discovered examples of proscribed material in the form of vintage postcards depicting chic “models” sporting sweaters that bear the forbidden modernist designs. The postcards may have prompted Polish craftswomen to knit their own bold variants, in defiance of state-sanctioned dress codes of the time. Decades later, they spurred the artist’s series of paintings, including this canvas, celebrating those subversive fashion statements.
Paulina Olowska (Poland b.1976) --- --- Cake (Torcik) 2010
During Poland’s Communist era (1945-1989), the state deemed modernist abstraction unacceptable. The censored visual vocabulary consequently circulated in secret through samizdat (or banned) publications. In 2010, Olowska discovered examples of proscribed material in the form of vintage postcards depicting chic “models” sporting sweaters that bear the forbidden modernist designs. The postcards may have prompted Polish craftswomen to knit their own bold variants, in defiance of state-sanctioned dress codes of the time. Decades later, they spurred the artist’s series of paintings, including this canvas, celebrating those subversive fashion statements.