Magdalena Abakanowicz

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Magdalena Abakanowicz

• ABAKAN RED 1969 1969, sisal weaving on metal
  support 300 x 300 x 100 cm 

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• Magdalena Abakanowicz (born June 20, 1930,
  in Falenty, Poland) is a Polish sculptor.
• Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in an aristocratic
  Polish-Russian family on her parents estate in
  Poland. The war broke out when she was nine years
  old. Then came the revolution imposed by Russia
  and the forty-five years of Soviet domination. 
• Magdalena was 12 years old in 1942 when she
  experianced the war in Poland first hand. One
  could only escape from the human cruelty inside
  oneself (into the world of dreams and
  imagination) Magda remembers starting to work
  with cloth because it could be folded and stored
  under the bed.
• Magda graduated the Academy of Fine Arts in
  Warsaw 1956 and began work at Milanowek as a tie
  designer in a silk factory.
• In her free time she taught herself how to weave.
  She loved the uneven surface that she was
  creating on her frame loom.

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Magdalena Abakanowicz in Maria Laszkiewiczs
basement, warsaw,1964
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• In 1962 She was commissioned by the polish
  government to create a piece for the 1st
  International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne,
  Switzerland. It required a tapestry be no less
  than 12 square meters. Weaving with clothes line
  and rope, her unique piece made a great impact in
  the show.

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Composition of white Forms 1961-62 Part of the
1st Lausanne Tapestry Biennial, Switzerland
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Magdalena Abakanowicz Dorota1964
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• During the 1970s, and into the 1980s, Abakanowicz
  changed medium and scale she began a series of
  figurative and non-figurative sculptures made out
  of pieces of coarse sackcloth which she sewed and
  pieced together and bonded with synthetic resins.
• In the late 1980s to 1990s Abakanowicz began to
  use metals, such as bronze, for her sculptures,
  as well as wood, stone, and clay.
• She is notable for her use of textiles as a
  sculptural medium and is regarded as being one of
  the most important and influential female artists
  of the 20th century.
• She has been a professor at the Academy of Fine
  Arts in Poznan, Poland from 1965 to 1990 and a
  visiting professor at UCLA in 1984. Magdalena
  Abakanowicz currently lives and works in Warsaw.

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Magdalena Abakanowicz with students at the
University of Poznan, Poland, 1981
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• ROPE INSTALLATION ON BALTIC DUNE 1968 

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• At first Magda created the pieces herself than
  she she had others help her the prep work in
  creating her pieces (washing dyeing, winding the
  tread and the countless tasks before starting to
  weave the piece).
• The materials fro her pieces can from a variety
  of sources, mostly cast-offs from different
  factories. Hemp flax, sisal from shoe factories.
  Horsehair and wool from the countryside.
• Maga believed in all organic processes and that
  were traditional materials of the past. This
  enabled her to manipulate both nature and the
  past. She works with her hands and thinks of her
  work as a protest against the misuses of the
  environment.

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• I like neither rules nor prescriptions, these
  enemies of imagination
• In 1966 she create her first woven forms that
  were independent of the walls and existed in
  space. My particular aim is to create
  possibilities for complete communion with an
  object whose structure is complex and soft.

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• BLACK ENVIRONMENT 1970-78, sisal weaving,
  fifteen pieces each on metal support fifteen
  pieces, each  300 x 80 x 80 cm 

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Magdalena Abakanowicz in front of Bois-le-Due
1970-71 It was the largest of her compostion at
the time. 2 X 20 X 2 meters. Like many of her
pieces at the time. Some of the segments turn
into bronze towards one end and others into red.
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• Sampler

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• SCHIZOID HEADS 1973-75, Burlap and hemp rope on
  metal support Sixteen pieces from 84 x 51 x 66
  cm to 109 x 76 x 71 cm 

• Art needs somebody to listen to its message,
  somebody to desire it, somebody to drink it, to
  use it like wine - otherwise it makes no sense.
• What is sculpture? With impressive continuity it
  testifies to man's evolving sense of reality, and
  fulfils the necessity to express what cannot be
  verbalized.

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• EMBRYOLOGY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
  1980 1978-1980, Burlap, cotton gauze, hemp rope,
  nylon and sisal Approximately 800 pieces from 4
  to 250 cm long Collection of the artist

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• Magdalena Abakanowicz for many years has dealt
  with the issue of "the countless". She says "I
  feel overwhelmed by quantity where counting no
  longer makes sense.
• A crowd of people or birds, insect or leaves, is
  a mysterious assemblage of variants of a certain
  prototype, a riddle of nature abhorrent to exact
  repetition or inability to produce it, just as a
  human hand can not repeat its own gesture". 

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• Her art has always addressed the problems of
  dignity and courage. This dignity resistance and
  will of survival conceal her individual personal
  affinities to the culture of Poland.
• The metaphoric language of her work has achieved
  a point of junction, which still is a challenge
  for mankind, for all its sophisticated
  civilisation. This is the point where the organic
  meets the non - organic, where the still alive
  meets that which is already dead, where all that
  exist in oppression meet all that strive for
  liberation in every meaning of this word.  

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SEATED FIGURES 1974-79, figures burlap and
resin, pedestal steel Eighteen pieces, each
figure ca. 104 x 51 x 66 cm 

• Each of her figures is an individuality, with its
  own expression, with specific details of skin.
• Organic, with the imprint of the artist's
  fingers. Their surface is natural like tree bark
  or animal fur or wrinkled skin.
• Like all her sculptures also these works are
  unique objects. 

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The Session (16 Backs) 1976-77 at the Malmo
Konsthall.Sweden
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Backs 1976-81 Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville
de Paris
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AGORA 2005-2006, iron 106 figures 285-295 x
95-100 x 135-145 cm Permanent installation in
Grant Park, Chicago

•  The entire population of her figures is enough
  to fill a large public square. They are today
  over thousand but they have never been seen
  together. They remain in various museums, public
  and private collections in different parts of the
  world. They constitute a warning, a lasting
  anxiety.