Eva Acking, the Swedish sculptress and painting artist, was born in Stockholm in 1943. Her entrance into art is due to an occasion and as a compromise to her father, who was an architect. She wanted to stay abroad as au pair for a couple of years, which he did not allow. Later when in Zürich there was a test for young foreign art students, Eva was successful at the test, which qualified her to attend to classes at the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Zürich.
Her meeting with the pieces of art by the British sculptor Henry Moore was of great inspiration to her, and that made her decide to be a sculptress. She studied sculpting in Stockholm, Nice and Paris – and then she decided NOT to be a professional artist but to continue painting as a hobby. That decision released her from too heavy demands upon performance and intelligent classification of her works of art. After that she painted more and more, and since 1973 she is working full time as an artist.
For a long period of time she was also a riding instructor, and she has competed successfully in dressage. Training and working with the horses in dressage is to her very similar to sculpturing and painting – using all your capabilities, feelings, intellect, intuition and physics. Only when working with the horses you also have to communicate with another and balance yourself to work in harmony with it in order to achieve an optimum result. The difference is that when painting you are supposed to cross the limits, and in dressage you are supposed to reach the maximum within the limits given, but in both of them you aim to reach a maximum of expression and harmony.
In Eva’s family one can find several artists in music from her mother’s side. Music has also been a part of Eva Acking’s creations. The composer and pianist Michael J. Smith has composed special music to her kür dressage program with her horses as well as for some of her paintings. Since 1978 Michael has performed live with his own especially composed music at four of her exhibition openings. In 2004, at her most recent exhibition in Landskrona, Sweden, Michael J. Smith performed with a concert written for the occasion.
Also the Danish musician Kim Menzer gave a special concert with music composed by him for her works of art at the same exhibition.
Music as well as poetry has taken a great part of Eva’s life also in other ways. Several years ago she met “Champion Jack Dupree”, the boxing champion that later became one of the greatest in American blues. She was his “road manager”, driving his car for about 130 miles a day on his tours through all Europe and Scandinavia. Some years later he moved to Sweden to live with Eva. He died in 1992, but before that he set music to and performed with some of her lyrical works.
Jack and Eva and the Norwegian artist Laurie Grundt made a film together, called “Feelings and Situations”, about Jack, his life and inspirations.
Today Eva lives in a farmhouse in St. Kopinge, a small community in southern Sweden, where she also has her studio. She paints and sculpts. She had an Out of Body Experience (OBE) in 1971, which she expresses in her art through describing the contemporaneous presence of two different dimensions; the material and the conscience.
By working with light instead of perspective her geometric shapes represent different dimensions in the paintings. When sculpturing she is working in aluminium or bronze. Her sculptures are all created as models that can be enlarged for official purposes.
