Gabriela Cichowska

Gabriela Cichowska, born in 1984 in Rzeszów, is an award-winning Polish painter and illustrator. For Punkeshi, she developed the DADAKKO series — Kokeshi-inspired paintings in which traditional wooden doll aesthetics collide with contemporary painting: playful, profound, and unmistakably singular.

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Wooden dolls and toys run as a continuous thread through Gabriela Cichowska's work. In the DADAKKO series, created for Punkeshi, she lends her Kokeshi-inspired figures a deeply human quality — gazes and gestures that oscillate between grace and quiet melancholy.

Gabriela Cichowska is among the most talented illustrators in Poland. Her picture book Fantje (text: Adam Jaromir) was recognised by the Polish Publishers Association PTWK as one of the most beautiful books of 2010 and included in the White Ravens catalogue 2011 of the International Youth Library. At the Bologna Ragazzi Award 2011, it received an honourable mention as Opera Prima. Fräulein Esther's Last Performance (text and storyboard: Adam Jaromir) earned her the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize and a nomination for the German Youth Literature Award 2014.

She studied graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and completed her doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, where she continues to teach drawing.