Anna Olczyk-Kocikowa (1929 - 2012 ), "Meeting" weaving miniature, 1995

Biography
At the end of the 1950s, she graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Lodz. She trained her workshop under the guidance ofLucjan Kintopf and Aniela Boguslawska and Maria Obrebska-Stieberowa. After graduation, she moved to Zgierz, one of the oldest industrial centers in Poland.There she made her professional career with Zgierz's J. Pietrusiński Woollen Industries, which had been operating since 1947. In the 1960s she returned to Lodz, where she worked as a didactician at the State Higher School of Fine Arts and developed her own work in textiles. In the mid-1970s, she was awarded the Committee Medal of the International Triennale of Textiles in Lodz for her composition "Podhale." The composition was appreciated for its extraordinary sensitivity to the colors and voice of the material. Olczyk-Kocikowa brought out the qualities of raw materials, and used the kilim weave in her practice, combining it with an author's weave inspired by the sumac technique.Anna Olczyk-Kocikowa's work, growing out of the tradition of the Polish school of textiles, is based on a close connection between the project and its execution. Her realizations are characterized by a high level of technical proficiency, perfect mastery of the weaving craft and proximity to traditional techniques and materials. At the same time, the artist brings out the possibilities of the fabric medium through synthetic, consciously simplified forms.