Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz was a Polish artist who created large-scale sculptures and installations using various materials such as textiles, bronze, iron, and stone. She was born to a noble landowning family in Falenty, near Warsaw, before the outbreak of World War II. Her childhood was marked by the Nazi occupation of Poland, during which her family became part of the Polish resistance. After the war, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and graduated in 1954. She began working as an independent artist in 1956 and initially gained recognition for her woven sculptures called Abakans, which challenged the conventional notions of textile art. She participated in the first Biennale Internationale de le Tapisserie in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962, where she received international acclaim. In the 1970s and 1980s, she shifted to creating humanoid sculptures, often in groups, that reflected the anonymity and confusion of the individual in the mass society. She used organic materials such as burlap, rope, and canvas, as well as hard materials such as bronze, stone, iron, and concrete. Some of her most celebrated works include Heads (1975), Backs (1976-82), Embryology (1978-81), Katarsis (1985), Becalmed Beings (1993), Space of Stone (2003), and Agora (2006). She also created drawings, paintings, and prints throughout her career. She taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, from 1965 to 1990, and was a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles in 1984. She received numerous awards and honors, such as the Herder Prize (1979), the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts (1999), and the Order of the White Eagle (2005). She died of cancer in Warsaw in 2017. Her work is widely exhibited and collected by museums and public institutions around the world.