Biography
Jacek Machowski, also known by the artistic name 'macha,' is a Polish graphic artist and academic who has become an important figure in bringing mokuhanga to Eastern Europe through his combination of artistic practice, university teaching, and workshop leadership. Born in 1983 in Rzeszow, he studied at the Faculty of Art of the University of Rzeszow, receiving his bachelor's degree in graphics in 2012.
His sustained engagement with mokuhanga came through his doctoral research in the Doctoral School of the University of Rzeszow, where he set out to adapt the Japanese woodcut technique to contemporary European artistic contexts. This focus makes him one of the relatively few academics in Central Europe conducting practice-based research on a medium that remains little used in Poland.
As a faculty member at the University of Rzeszow's Faculty of Fine Arts, Machowski organizes and leads mokuhanga workshops that introduce students and fellow artists to the water-based woodblock printing method. His work blends experimentation with traditional technique, and he has exhibited in over one hundred exhibitions internationally.
Machowski has been an active participant in the international mokuhanga community, exhibiting at the International Mokuhanga Conference juried exhibitions in Nara (2021) and Echizen (2024), and is listed in the Mokumap directory maintained by Mokuhanga Magic. He was featured on The Unfinished Print podcast in an episode titled 'On The Edge Of Abstraction,' reflecting the direction of his artistic practice toward the boundaries between representation and pure form.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇵🇱Poland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Jacek Machowski, also known by the artistic name 'macha,' is a Polish graphic artist and academic who has become an important figure in bringing mokuhanga to Eastern Europe through his combination of artistic practice, university teaching, and workshop leadership. Born in 1983 in Rzeszow, he studied at the Faculty of Art of the University of Rzeszow, receiving his bachelor's degree in graphics in 2012.
Jacek Machowski's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.