PATA
Artists in Dialogue

For seven years the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź in Poland has organized the famous PATA International Summer Courses – Printmaking and Textile Art whose aims are to promote the artistic traditions of Łódź in the fields of graphic art and textile art. During its past editions, the event gained international prestige and became one of the main summer education centers in Europe where artists and students from all over the world come, including Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Spain. , The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Iceland, India, Japan, Canada, Columbia, Cuba, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, the Republic of South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy. While these courses deepen knowledge and practice engraving techniques and textile art, participants gain international experience, expand their chain of contacts and have the opportunity to exhibit their work in an international context.

As part of an exchange agreement signed between the Fundación´ace and the Academy of Arts and Design of Lodz, in 2017 an open call was made for Argentine artists from which the artist Eugenia Foggel was selected. In 2018, reciprocally, we received the Polish artist Aleksandra Ilkiewicz, doctoral candidate of the Academy. In 2019 the exchange was made with teachers from the academy: Alicjia Habisiak Matzack and Tomas Matzack traveled to Buenos Aires as guest artists while the academy awarded two young members we selected from our team to their PATA courses: Cecilia Candiani, Assistant Executive and Sebastián Podbersich, who was a volunteer-in-residence in 2018. In this way Cecilia and Sebastián traveled to Lodz during the European summer participating as exchange scholars in the seminar of the Canadian artist Marilene Olivier: Graphics in the 3rd and 4th dimension.

PATA seminars are intended for students and graduates of Polish and foreign academies and for all artists who wish to learn or further develop their skills in the aforementioned fields. The objective of the course program is to awaken and cultivate by offering traditional forms of artistic expression as well as innovative technologies developed by leading artists. The fellows had access to the excellent study team from the Engraving Department, the Textile Art Department and the Textile Printing Department. The scope of the topics covered during the classes was adjusted to the individual needs of the individual participants and an exposition was made at the end of it.