Magdalena Abakanowicz, A Survey: 1987-2009

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magdalena abakanowicza survey: 1987 - 2009

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magdalena abakanowicz

40 west 57th street | new york | 2 12-541-4900 | marlboroughgallery.com

march 28 - april 27, 2013

a survey: 1987 - 2009

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As a curator, I am around a lot of hopeful artists. Still, for all the resources the art world can afford, to be a good artist, you have to have fire in the belly. You need to be determined. To be a great artist, you need to be filled with an urgent necessity to make art and to show what art can be and what art can do.

In the face of economic deprivation, political restrictions and censorship, war and trauma, the possibilities to be an artist are all the more difficult to access, but the fire can be greater—at least for the person with the potential to be a great artist. That is the case with Magdalena Abakanowicz. Her biography, Fate and Art (quoted in this essay), demonstrates this artist’s determination to materialize her vision in the face of the tumultuous world into which she was born and, hence, to fight against the circumstances fate dealt her. For Abakanowicz, art is an expression of survival, but even more so, of vitality, of her life. We see this in her Anonymous Portraits and Anonim series—testaments to herself, her endurance, her face, and perhaps more so to the eternal face of humanity, the ancient ideal of the human being standing between god and oblivion.

Magdalena Abakanowicz made her entrée onto the international art scene in 1965 at the São Paulo Biennale where she showed her monumental woven works and won the gold medal, first prize. But in those times in Poland she was restricted from traveling to the exhibition.

Creating in solitude. My body was a cage for my spirit. Yet in this cage I could discover my shapes, their texture, the necessity for the organic, for the huge scale that became the Abakans.

Stepping back in time, the story begins with her desire to be an artist. After World War II Abakanowicz studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In this era of Soviet Social Realism, she found rules imposed by the academy dictating what a painting should be. So, a determined student, she created in secret.

During the nights, a friendly caretaker at the Academy of Art let me in. Under my arm I carried huge canvases, 3 by 4 meters or larger, patched together from sheets. In an empty studio, I fixed the canvases to the wall. I painted, invented shapes, discovered forms. They lifted me. I could walk along them. At dawn, I folded the paintings and went home. I put everything under my bed. These paintings were my revolt and protest.

When she managed to have a one-person show, the authorities found her art too “formalistic,” not engaged in building socialism. So the exhibition was closed even before it opened. After school her first job was in a silk factory outside the city where she was employed to paint designs on raw silk. She wrote of that period:

Homeless, I slept on a bench at the central railway station. A woman found me a room in the part of Warsaw not completely destroyed by war and insurrection. It was a narrow, three-story house. My room was in the attic. There was a large hole in the ceiling through which I could see the roof.

Her life had not always been like this. Her parents were aristocrats descended from Mongolian tribes, the Tartars. They could trace their roots to the 12th century ruler Houlagou-Khan, whose dynasty came to be ruled by his eldest son, Abaka-Khan. Over the next seven centuries the name was changed to its present form. As the artist wrote:

Mine was a mighty family exterminated by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. The only survivors, two boys, made their way to Poland, the country of their mother’s origin. The elder named Konstanty was my father.

When she showed her revolutionary woven works, critics gave them her name—Abakan—because these were like nothing else, and so, this heroic family name took on another meaning.

But how to manage to make such works in postwar Poland? Abakanowicz’s family circumstances had changed greatly during World War II, their vast family estate seized by the Soviets. Her father, designated a “class enemy,” landless and jobless, was destined to remain outside society. Her mother, a war invalid, became the wage earner, being granted permission to sell newspapers. These were dire times. In 1946, walking with her mother and seeing a woman with a baby carriage, the artist recalls:

I stopped to look closer, delighted. Mother told me that when you marry, “I don’t think you should have children”…She suffered because of our living conditions and was afraid that I would turn my life into a torture. She also felt that, as a determined artist, I would never be happy giving up my passion for any reason.

art throughout a lifetime B Y M A rY J A n e J Ac O B

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Some forty years later Abakanowicz made Pregnant, now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, new York.

When the artist did marry, the communist state in Poland limited the size of a flat to seven to nine square meters per person. Still, it took two years for her and her husband to obtain their own one-room apartment with a shower, toilet, and gas stove in the corridor near the entrance. She wrote:

We were so happy. It was ours; we were independent. We would live in our small room for 15 years. It was our shelter, warm and nice, but with time it became a cage.

And we think of her encaged works like Lukas in Pyramid that transcend their enclosure.

In such confined space Magdalena Abakanowicz sought to create on a big scale.

I could not wait to translate my imaginary forms into real shapes. The necessity I felt was so strong.

In addition to the problem of space, there was the issue of materials. Along Warsaw’s Vistula River she found old, discarded ropes and used them.

They had their own history; they became my material. I pulled them into threads, washed, and dyed them on our gas stove. In the basement of [another elder artist’s] home was a loom. I did not know much about weaving but in another way that allowed me to invent my own technique.

So the Abakans were born. Of them she wrote:

The fabric I made was stiff, its surface grew into reliefs similar to tree bark or animal fur. Larger than me they were safe like the hollow trunk of the old willow I would enter as a child in search of hidden secrets. Their bodies sometimes opened to reveal a hairy interior that one does not experience with ease. When moved, they responded with the sleepy rhythm of a sea wave, which repeats the same heavy action over and over.

I liked the fact that I was creating an object from the beginning, from the outer shell to the total shape. I sewed several surfaces together to form a huge three-dimensional object. I could not see the work in its entirety, only with my imagination. Occasionally, a nearby school allowed me to use its gymnasium to lay out the form I had produced in the basement. I spun around on my woven surface, happy, already imagining it in space, in a vertical position, embracing me like a big wing with a slow, heavy rhythm.

I would see them for the first time hanging in my exhibitions in Stockholm, London, Amsterdam. They would unfold to become magical, vibrant. Monumental, strong, soft and erotic, these objects became the image of my reality, and stood against established definitions.

Abakanowicz would not have a studio of her own until the early 1970s when she and her husband received the necessary permission to buy a flat. It was on the tenth floor of an apartment building: three small rooms and a larger one that would be her studio. Permission was in recognition of her achievements, and she paid for it with the prize money from the São Paolo Biennale. Finally with enough space, she built a frame on which to work on the Abakans in her new studio, but over time she found that in fact she had fully explored this series in spite of the impossible circumstances under which they had been created, and it was time to move on.

Thus, a new cycle emerged, Schizoid Heads. Made out of burlap and rope, these were her first objects to stand, not hang, in space. enlarged body fragments, they expressed her sense of man’s uncertain being. They inspired her desire to learn more about the reasons and sources for man’s actions. She wanted to discover more. She was given access to doctors at the Institute of neurology and Pathology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and was able to observe the materiality of the brain. Of this she wrote:

Our brain bears the vestiges of our ancestors millions of years ago, the traces of primitive animals, the first mammals. Its different centers of power cause a continuing and permanent struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind.

What creatures later emerged! Her Coexistence series posits a hybrid of man and animal.

Using fiber, Magdalena Abakanowicz was lead to an investigation of the human form. In 1978 she wrote:

I see fiber as the basic element constructing the organic world on our planet as the greatest mystery of our environment. It is from fiber that all living organisms are built—the tissues of plants, our nerves, our genetic code, ourselves, the canals of our veins, our muscles. Handling fiber, we handle mystery. Made with my hands, it is a record of my soul.

Yet her understanding of the human body was always shaped by her experience. As an adolescent in 1943 the artist had seen her mother wounded when German soldiers broke into their estate:

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A bullet tore her right elbow. It severed her arm from the shoulder and wounded her left hand. The capable, wise arm suddenly became a piece of meat, separate, on the floor. I looked at it with amazement. I had seen dead bodies, but they somehow had always preserved their completeness in front of others.

Later, separated from her mother during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, she wrote:

I dreamt about Mother not maimed. I willed her to have hands again, so that what had happened would be undone. I thought about it intently and continuously, demanding that time be reversed, wishing her to come back to us and be as before. Two months later, when she returned, embracing her, thin and shrunken, I could feel her infirmity very precisely. An empty sleeve.

In the first decade of this century, over sixty years later, she would make the outstretched burlap arms of From the Anatomy Cycle.

Memories of others also entered her memory as she spoke of a collective consciousness. Some years later, Abakanowicz would write of her large figurative groups:

Imagination is stronger than reality or rather replaces it. I remember the severe winter of 1942. The Germans occupied Poland. A transport of children from Poland to Germany—where they would be turned into Germans—was stopped by accident for a day and a night. Hundreds of blond, blue-eyed children in the unheated cattle carriages froze to death. When finally soldiers opened the doors, the bodies fell out, stiff and hard like sculptures. I wasn’t there. But the story built images in my young memory—clear, strong and lasting.

And we think of her Bambini.

Later, of the end of World War II, she wrote of her own spiritual emaciation.

I felt increasingly hollow as if my insides had been removed and the exterior, unsupported by anything, shrank, losing its shape.

For the series Backs, hollowed out, headless shells of seated figures, Abakanowicz used old burlap sacks from grains or potatoes:

Dirty, tattered, they had their own history. The skin of my figures had to derive from everyday life. I fixed the sack fabric with glue and resin. Headless and handless sat the monumental torso, a burlap shell, thin and wrinkled.

I was 40 years old when I got my first studio. I used a man as a model. It was a new dimension, a new expression, with new associations. My constant dream about large-scale sculptures suddenly became embodied in a landscape of shell-like human shapes, negatives of the bulk. With these I felt I had to speak about what I had observed in my life, what I experienced looking at humans—their limits and their power. I wanted to show my reality, the reality of my time, and of my country.

When commissioned to do a work for the Hiroshima city Museum of contemporary Art, her series Backs took on another reference. Abakanowicz had visited Hiroshima several times. Its tragedy reminded her of what war had done in her own country. When she received this commission she was working on a new version of the human back much larger than life size: monumental, armless, and simple, more ideal than before. The resulting work was 40 Becalmed Beings.

In Hiroshima, morning sunlight falls on and warms the backs of Abakanowicz’s figures. It was morning, the precise and painful time of 8:15 am, when the first atomic bomb was dropped. These bronze backs, set between the museum and a park, have an uncanny organicism. Like the metal and glass fused for all time by the heat of the blast and now preserved in this place, these backs take on unnatural textures with the artist’s hand. They are material transformed. Like the rocks of Ryongi, they are singular in form, and like these stones, they too are vehicles that, in contemplation, tell a far greater story. In this setting Becalmed Beings live in fluid transition and unending impermanence, and as they pass into shadow at midday, their shiny, wet look gives way to a dull, deeper tone, and they grow more rocklike themselves.

even before she had cast figures, the interior of organic matter had fascinated Abakanowicz. She said::

I suspected there, inside, I could find the explanation for the character and nature of living matter. Needing to visualize these thoughts, she said: My studio began to fill up with old mattresses, and garbage heaps offered me old sofas and clothing, sacks and stockings. I built objects rounded like bellies or elongated like mummies; small, like potatoes; others, larger than human size. I sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. They arose from my physical need to create an invented anatomy, a soft landscape of countless pieces related to each other, like a family differing in size but not in character. I called this cycle “Embryology.”

This work made its debut when the artist was invited to represent Poland at the Venice Biennale in 1980. It was a time filled with political tension between the Soviet Union and Poland; a time of the Solidarity movement working underground. The artist would say simply:

My show was understood as a cry from behind the Iron Curtain.

As result of the Venice Biennale, Magdalena Abakanowicz was commissioned to make a new work for Giuliano Gori’s sculpture garden, Fattoria di celle, in Tuscany. She knew the romantic park would not be right: instead she chose a fallow field.

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By the time I found that field I knew that what had to stand there were figures of human-like trees, human-like coffins. The decision to make this came abruptly, in the way that excess must boil over. I seemed to be an onlooker, astonished by what was growing inside me, as though removed, on the outside; this idea swelled and took on a force and personality of its own.

This was the start of her outdoor installations, “Spaces of contemplation.” This group of thirty-five figures in Italy called Katarsis also occasioned the artist’s entry into the use of bronze that became available to her there. She discovered this material for herself, using it in an uncommon hand-made, delicate way, impressing imprints of her palm and fingers over its surface. It was the right material for her message:

Katarsis is of a material more lasting than life, she said, perhaps because I hoped that for others it would be a sign of our lasting anxiety.

A few years later, she responded to another commission, this time for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, using a very different material: stone from the desert. She created mammoth, twelve-ton stone discs, finding life in their surfaces that evidenced the countless sea creatures from which this rock had been formed over millions of years. She also admired the peaceful atmosphere at that time among Bedouins, Kurds, Israelis and Arabs, who came together in this place of uncertainty that remains so still. She wrote of this work, Negez:

There is a moment between 5:00 and 6:00 in the evening when the sun descends that the stone disks seem then to be transparent. I look upon my Jerusalem disks, dripping with the gold of the sun. With gold.

In my memory I see myself as a small girl covered with golden disks. It was long ago. The front and revolution were approaching. We escaped from death with empty hands. But our bodies were wrapped in rags, many gold coins sewn inside. I remember playing with these golden coins before they were sewn up. I put them in rows. They would stand on edge like the stone discs I had created here. I remember this heavy coat hurting but being as important as life. Mother said, “This may save our existence.”

Following Negez the wheel took on another, more threatening form in Standing Figure with Wheel (New York) or was at rest in Figure on Vehicle or became a balancing beam in The Second Never Seen Figure On Beam with Wheels. In such works, figurative and abstract at once, the body and object unite. They become one in War Games. Begun in 1987, the same year as Negez, War Games were born from her experience.

Abakanowicz recalled working as a young teenager in a makeshift hospital:

Constantly new people, always horribly wounded. Too many wounded people. I did not think I talked to anybody. Only once. And this has stayed with me. I remember it still so precisely that even now I could draw the face and the hands of that boy: a soldier with the Polish Underground Army, 18. He talked about what he wanted to do in the future and of the time when he was small

and lived with his parents. He talked to me as if he knew me, looked at me, and smiled as if I were someone close. When he died, he seemed very small: both his legs had been severed by shrapnel.

War Games are made from trees that the artist found along the road in the lake district of Poland, cut down each autumn because they are too old or crooked or deemed useless. She said:

I looked at these huge bodies, muscular, wounded, but full of strength and personality: trunks with amputated limbs, in gestures of pain or protest or helplessness. Erotic, with large spread legs, nearly naturalistic, nearly too female – like shameless effrontery. An anatomy as real as my own.

Abakanowicz has been drawn to nature since childhood:

I escaped outside. Without a thought I became one with the murmurs of the time of day and with this movement, stillness, growth, decay. There I belonged. I wanted to surrender to them, so that I might understand the mysteries that separated us. The urge to have around me—to touch, to hoard—twigs, stones, shards, and bark: they embodied stories with which I wanted to live. And she recalled from her childhood: I did not yet know how to write. I drew in the earth with a stick. Drawing could contain secret power.

In 1991, Abakanowicz participated in a competition to redesign the historical axis, which crosses Paris from the Louvre to the modern business district of La Défense. She sought a union of nature and human life and created an arboreal architecture. each building was to be a vertical garden, the facade enveloped by trellises supporting vegetation and an irrigation system. The greenery would produce oxygen to counter pollution. On the top of each building would be wind turbines and solar energy collectors. In the underground, in the “roots,” were parking garages, commercial spaces, subway stations. But she found that the architects were not open to the ideas of an artist or to a work situated somewhere between nature, art, and architecture, even though architects are still seeking to solve problems of sustainable living. So this artist’s desire to create a harmony with nature returned to the realm of sculpture, and she took up a deep and sustained investigation of the animal world: birds, her Uccello; fish; and mammals of known, mutant, and mythological forms.

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Meanwhile Magdalena Abakanowicz also continued with her figurative groups—standing figures, walking figures, bodies. Sometimes groups stand at attention in an attitude of confrontation; others remain more silent and calm, waiting. These works had fearful origins in war and of the 1943 Warsaw uprising: being separated from her family, firing from all sides….everyone was running…Then, suddenly, I was alone in a crowd of people. Her figures are also rooted in her recollection of mundane aspects of life in postwar communist Warsaw where there were lines to get anything:Standing in line became like training for inner discipline/meditation. Facing the back of the person in front of me, I realized that for everybody the person ahead is an enemy ready to get the last sausage or car or pair of shoes or the last available flat. No smile, no trust, no kindness. The crowd in a line could have unpredictable reaction; angry, sinister and ominous. But ultimately they were defending themselves and their families against the lack of what was needed. People around me stood silent.

Deciding to create groups, I wanted to confront man with himself, with his solitude in multitude. They constitute an interrogation, a sign of lasting anxiety, a warning.

This was the impulse for Agora, the largest work Abakanowicz has yet made: 106 nine-feet tall cast iron figures for chicago’s Grant Park, which she said was:

…born out of my necessity to build a dialogue between human beings in times when aggressivity seems to still dictate and be the rule. This work has the ambition to prove that art is able to be a means of building links between distant societies independent on culture and collective memory. Agora: the ancient Greek word for a space in town where people would gather to discuss their thoughts, their ideas, philosophy, poetry, and law. In bringing my work to the heart of Chicago, I raise my voice in the hope of hearing the voices of others willing to participate in Agora.

Art born of necessity, the necessity that gives life. This is the life of true artists as their art is for them a lifetime of experience. not all art exhibitions tell such a story, but this one does. not all artists give their life to others in art. But this artist does. •

M A rY J A n e J Ac O B is a curator and Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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War Games “Marrow Bone,” 1987 wood and iron59 x 137 3/4 x 31 1/2 in.149.9 x 349.9 x 80 cm

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Title, 20XXmedium, XX x XX in., XX x XX cm



Anonymous Portrait #3, 1989-90 cotton, resin and wood23 3/4 x 9 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.60.3 x 24.8 x 18.4 cm

Anonymous Portrait #4, 1989-90 cotton, resin and wood25 3/4 x 10 1/2 x 7 1/8 in.65.4 x 26.7 x 18.1 cm

Anonymous Portrait #7, 1989-90 cotton, resin and wood25 3/4 x 10 x 7 1/4 in.65.4 x 25.4 x 18.4 cm

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Anonymous Portrait #8, 1989-90 cotton, resin and wood

25 3/4 x 10 1/2 x 7 1/4 in.65.4 x 26.7 x 18.4 cm

Anonymous Portrait Head I, 1989 cotton, resin and sand

27 1/2 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.69.9 x 20 x 20 cm

Anonymous Portrait Head #3, 1987 cotton, resin and sand

25 x 10 x 7 7/8 in.63.5 x 25.4 x 20 cm

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Silent Figure, 2002 bronze71 5/8 x 20 1/2 x 11 3/4 in.182 x 52 x 30 cm

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Angelo, 1989 bronze

67 x 22 x 13 in.170.2 x 55.9 x 33 cm

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Bambini (10 figures), 1998-99 bronzeeach, approximately: 43 x 15 x 10 in.109.2 x 38.1 x 25.4 cm

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Sage D, 1990 bronze58 5/8 x 25 5/8 x 33 7/8 in.148.9 x 65.1 x 86 cm

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Plaster Body 5, 1987 plaster and wood

54 3/4 x 29 1/2 x 25 in.139.1 x 74.9 x 63.5 cm

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Lukas in Pyramid, 1991 burlap, resin and iron78 3/4 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 in.200 x 89.9 x 89.9 cm

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Figure in Iron House, 1989-90 burlap, resin and iron

58 1/4 x 43 3/4 x 35 in.148 x 111.1 x 88.9 cm

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Walking Figures (6), 2000 bronzeeach, approximately:65 5/8 x 20 3/8 x 31 1/4 in.166.7 x 51.8 x 79.4 cm

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Standing Figures (6), 2000 bronze

each, approximately:66 1/4 x 20 1/4 x 14 1/4 in.

168.3 x 51.4 x 36.2 cm

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Show Case with “Object in Old Suit,” 1996 iron, glass and burlap37 1/4 x 30 x 18 1/4 in.94.6 x 76.2 x 46.6 cm

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Show Case with “Grey Faces,” 1996 glass and linen threads

36 5/8 x 29 7/8 x 18 1/8 in.93 x 75.9 x 46 cm

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Ucello 1, 1999 aluminum88 x 62 x 52 in.223.5 x 157.5 x 132.1

opposite:Ucello 4, 1999 aluminum82 x 80 x 53 in.208.3 x 203.2 x 134.6 cm

Ucello 6, 1999 aluminum108 x 50 x 48 in.274.3 x 127 x 121.9

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From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumaf, 1990 bronze59 x 39 1/2 x 20 1/4 in.149.9 x 100.3 x 51.4 cm

From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumam, 1989-90 bronze66 1/2 x 11 x 26 1/2 in.168.9 x 27.9 x 67.3 cm

From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumabi, 1989-90 bronze61 x 13 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.154.9 x 34.9 x 50.2 cm

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From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumafi , 1990 bronze59 x 5 3/4 x 18 in.149.9 x 14.6 x 45.7 cm

From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumag, 1990 bronze62 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 24 1/4 in.158.8 x 31.8 x 61.6 cm

From the cycle “Hoofed Mammal Heads” - Artumaci, 1990bronze61 3/4 x 11 3/4 x 26 1/4 in.156.9 x 29.9 x 66.7 cm

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Coexistence (6), 2002 burlap77 1/4 x 23 x 17 in.196.2 x 58.4 x 43.2 cm

opposite:Coexistence (8), 2002 burlap85 1/2 x 26 x 30 in.217.2 x 66 x 76.2 cm

Coexistence (7), 2002 burlap85 3/4 x 26 x 22 in.217.8 x 66 x 55.9 cm

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From the Anatomy Cycle: Anatomy 32, 2009 burlap, wood and steel34 1/2 x 22 x 7 in.87.6 x 55.9 x 17.8 cm

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71 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.181.6 x 57.2 x 36.8 cm


70 x 27 x 16 in.177.8 x 68.6 x 40.6 cm

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The Second Never Seen Figure On Beam with Wheels, 2001 bronze92 1/4 x 123 x 26 1/4 in.234.3 x 312.4 x 66.7 cm

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1930 Born in Falenty, Poland1950-54 Studied at the Academy of Fine

Arts, Warsaw, Poland1954-60 Painted a series of large gouaches

on paper and canvas1960s Created monumental three-

dimensional forms called Abakans, which were personally hand-woven in her own technique

1965 Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Poznań, Poland until 1990

1970s Changed scale and material; created huge cycles of figurative and non-figurative sculptures made out of burlap and resins called Alterations

1980s Created series of monumental sculptures using bronze, stone, wood, and iron; installed permanent outdoor installation, Spaces to Experience, in Italy, Israel, South Korea, Germany, and America

1987 Created Negev, 7 discs, limestone situated on a hilltop, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

1994-97 Created Hurma, 150 figures of children and Backward Standing, 60 figures of adults; created drawings and choreographies inspired by her sculptures and these were taken to the stage by Asbestos, a Japanese Butoh dance group

1999 Abakanowicz on the Roof is installed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

2000 Created Crowd of 95 Figures, bronze figures of adults and children standing and walking

2002 Unrecognized, 112 larger-than-life, cast-iron figures, is permanently installed at Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland (each figure is over 83 inches high)

2003 Inauguration of Space of Stone, 22 granite blocks installed at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey; Open Air Aquarium, 30 stainless steel fish, is permanently installed and situated along the riverfront on Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2004 Big Figures, 20 bronze walking figures, is installed in front of Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey (2001-2002; on loan from a private collector)

2005 Five Running, bronze, is installed at Sculpture Garden of Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

2006 Agora, a large permanent monument consisting of 106 cast-iron figures, is installed at Chicago Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois (each about 110 1/4 in. tall)

2009 Created Birds, aluminum, Wroclaw, Poland

2010 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel figures, Warsaw, Poland

The artist lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.

selected awards + recognition

1965 Grand Prix of São Paolo Biennale, São Paolo, Brazil

1993 Award for Distinction in Sculpture, Sculpture Center, New York, New York

1997 Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts, World Cultural Council, Mexico City, Mexico

2000 Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Der Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Berlin, Germany

Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, Rome, Italy

2004 Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, France

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, New Jersey

2010 Das Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Berlin, Germany

solo eXhibitions

1960 Wystawa prac Magdaleny Abakanowicz—Kosmowskiej, Galeria Kordegarda, Warsaw, Poland

1962 Tapisseries, Magdalena Abakanowicz Pologne, Galerie Dautzenberg, Paris, France

1965 Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland

1967 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway; traveled to Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, Bergen, Norway; Stavanger Kunstforening, Stavanger, Norway; and Kunstforening, Trondheim, Norway

1968 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; traveled to Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands; Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Schiedam Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland

1969 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland

Kunsthalle, Mannheim, Germany1970 National Museum, Stockholm,

Sweden1971 The Fabric Forms of Magdalena

Abakanowicz, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California

1972 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Textile Strukturen und Konstruktionen, Environments, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany

Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland

1973 Rope Structures, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England

1974 Muzeum Sztuki, Lodź, Poland1975 Abakanowicz: Organic Structures

and Human Forms, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England

Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland


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1976 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; traveled to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

1977 Organic Structures, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden

Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway

1980 Polish Pavillion, 39° Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

1982 ARC/ Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France

Retrospective Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; traveled to Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada; National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C; De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas; Portland Art Museum and Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon; Visual Arts Center of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska; and Frederick S. Wright Art Gallery of the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California (through 1984)

1983 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada

1985 Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland

Abakanowicz: About Men, Sculpture 1974-1985, Xavier Fourcade Inc., New York, New York

1986 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia

1988 Mücsarnok-Kunstalle Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri

1989 Städelschen Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent Work, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

1990 Sculpturen, Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, Germany

Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

Marlborough Fine Art, London, England

1991 Retrospective Exhibition, Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan; Art Tower, Mito, Japan; and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan

Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland Marlborough Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan1992 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,

Kansas City, Missouri Magdalena Abakanowicz: Arboreal

Architecture, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1993 Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych, Kraków, Poland

War Games, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

Recent Sculpture, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island; traveled to Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

1994 Galeria Kordegarda, Warsaw, Poland; traveled to Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland

Abakanowicz, Galeriá Marlborough, Madrid, Spain

Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

1995 Els Jardins de Can Altamira, Barcelona, Spain

Center of Polish Sculpture, Oronsko, Poland

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield, England

1996 Doris Freedman Plaza, New York, New York (through 1997)

Oeuvres récentes, Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, France

Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales

Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark; traveled to Kulturhuset Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

1997 Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, France (through 1998)

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Mutants, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida

1998 Starmach Gallery, Kraków, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent

Works, Sculpture, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

1999 Abakanowicz on the Roof, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Abakanowicz dans les Jardins du Palais Royal, Palais Royal, Paris, France

Caminando, 30 Basel Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland

Wild Flowers, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

2000 Working Process, Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy

Ninety Five Figures from the Crowd of One Thousand Ninety Five Figures, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

Abakanowicz, Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa,Warsaw, Poland

2001 Magdalena Abakanowicz: About the Human Condition, Grant Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills, California; traveled to Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Pillsbury Peters Fine Art, Dallas, Texas

Space to Experience, Three Rivers Arts Festival, Point State Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne, Germany

Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Crowd IV and Infantes, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

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2002 Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań, Poland

2003 Dancing Figures, Marlborough Fine Art, London, England

Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Long Wait, MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario, Canada

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Tanzende und Schreitende, Beck & Eggeling, Düsseldorf, Germany

Abakanowicz, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, the Netherlands

Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Skulls, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Coexistence, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy

2004 Mutation and Crystallization, Pei Ling Chan Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

Hurma, Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France; traveled to L’Espace d’Art Contemporain André Malraux, Colmar, France

Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Kunsthaus Centre PasquArt, Bienne, Switzerland

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Melchior, Jonas, and the Eight White Faces, Taguchi Fine Art, Tokyo, Japan

Sculptures, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Backward Seated Figures, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York (through 2005)

2005 Space to Experience: The Sculpture of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Szépművészeti Múzeum Könyvtára, Budapest, Hungary

La Foule V, Galerie Saint-Séverin, Paris, France

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Im Dialog VI, Stadtkirche Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

The Gigant, and The Son of Gigant, The Fields Sculpture Park, The Sculpture Park Art Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, New York (created in 2003)

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Confessions, Sculpture and Drawings, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

2006 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculptures et Dessins, Marlborough Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Trondheim Art Museum, Trondheim, Norway

Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Drawings, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

2007 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Coexistence: Dream, Gruby and Kozio, Taguchi Fine Art, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculptures et Dessins, Galerie Patrice Trigano, Paris, France

2008 La Corte del Rey Arturo, Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

King Arthur’s Court, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Birds, Conglomerates, Ghosts, Spirits, Beck & Eggeling, Düsseldorf, Germany

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Where are the areas of calm?, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Reality of Dreams, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Institut València d’Art Modern, Centro Julio Gonzalez, València, Spain

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Hurma, 1994-1995, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, Florida (through 2009)

2009 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Space to Experience, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany

2010 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent Sculpture, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York

Abakanowicz, National Museum in Kraków, Kraków, Poland

Abakanowicz: Nareszcie w Warszawie!, Ogrody Zamku Królewskiego, Warsaw, Poland

2011 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Life and Work, Olomouc Museum of Art, Olomouc, Czech Republic

2012 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Walking Figures, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, New York, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Human Adventure, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey (through 2013)

2013 Abakanowicz? Abakanowicz!, The House of the Visual Artist, Warsaw, Poland

Permanent outdoor installations

1965 Standing Shape, steel, Elblag City, Poland. Created 1965.

1985 Katarsis, 33 figures, bronze, Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy. Created 1985.

1987 Negev, 7 discs, limestone, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel. Created 1987.

1988 Space of Dragon, 10 metaphoric animal heads, bronze, Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea. Created 1985.

1990 Neun Figuren Raum, bronze, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany. Created 1990.

1991 Sagacious Heads, 4 sculptures from the cycle, bronze, John Kluge Collection, Charlottesville, Virginia. Created 1989.

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1992 Sagacious Head with Standing Figure, bronze, Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan. Created 1989.

Sagacious Heads, 2 sculptures from the cycle, bronze, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Created 1989.

1993 Hand-like Trees, 5 sculptures, bronze, Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California. Created 1992.

Becalmed Beings, group of 40 figures, bronze, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan. Created 1993.

One of the Crowd, bronze, Hakone Open Air Museum, Hakone, Japan. Created 1993.

1994 Sarcophagi in Glass Houses, 4 forms, wood, metal glass, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York. Created 1983-1999.

Manus, from the cycle, Hand-like Trees, bronze, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. Created 1994.

Magnus, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, Spazi d’ Arte, Giuliano Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy. Created 1994.

1995 Bronze Crowd, 36 bronze figures, The Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas. Created 1990-1991.

1997 Cecyna, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey. Created 1994.

1997-98 Space of Unknown Growth, 22 forms of different sizes, concrete, Collection of Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania. Created 1997-1998.

1998 Fish, bronze, Metropolitano de Lisboa Orient Station, Lisbon, Portugal. Created 1997-1998.

1999 30 Bronze Standing Figures, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Created 1994, 1998-1999.

Caminando, 20 walking figures, bronze, private collection of Napa Valley, California. Created 1998-1999.

Figura Prima, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. Created 1995.

Puellae, group of 30 figures, bronze, National Gallery of Art, Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Created 1992.

2000 Figura Rompa, from the cycle, Hand-like Trees, bronze, Biarritz, France. Created 1995.

Manus Ultimus, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France. Created 1998-1999.

Figure on Trunk, bronze, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Created 1998-2000.

Black Crowd, 20 figures, bronze, Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany. Created 2000.

Figura Ultima, from the cycle Hand-Like Trees, bronze, Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany. Created 1995.

Figure on a Trunk, bronze, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Created 2000.

Figure on Beam with Wheels, bronze, Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, Ohio.

Large Figure on Trunk with Wheels and Slim Figure on Trunk with Wheels, bronze, Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy. Created 1998-2000.

2001 Birds of Knowledge of Good and Evil, 6 sculptures, aluminum, Woman’s Club of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Created 2001.

Mutants, 6 sculptures, stainless steel, Collection of Artists’ Garden, Warsaw, Poland. Created 2001-2002.

2001-02 Mutant, stainless steel, Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany. Created 2001.

2002 Unrecognized, 112 iron figures, Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland. Created 2001-2002.

Hand-Like Trees, 4 sculptures, bronze, Brea Civic Cultural Center, Brea, California. Created 1994-1995.

2003 Open Air Aquarium, 30 stainless steel fish, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Created 2002.

Space of Stone, 22 granite stone sculptures, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey. Created 2001-2002.

2004 Big Figures, 20 bronze figures, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Created 2001-2004.

2005 Caminando-Peripatein, 20 walking figures, bronze, private collection of Napa Valley, California

Five Running, bronze, Sculpture Garden of Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

2006 20 Vancouver Walking Figures, iron cast figures, Vancouver, Canada

Agora, 106 iron figures, Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois. Inaugurated November, 2006.

2009 Birds, aluminum, Wroclaw, Poland2010 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel

figures, Warsaw, Poland

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Public collections

Australian National Gallery of Art, Canberra, AustraliaBusan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, South KoreaCantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford, CaliforniaCaracas Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, PolandCitadel Park, Poznań, PolandChicago Grant Park, Chicago, IllinoisDes Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IowaFondazione Pomodoro, Milan, ItalyFrederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MichiganGiuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, ItalyGrounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New JerseyHakone Open Air Museum, The Fuji Hakone Izu National Park, Hakone, JapanHenie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, NorwayHess Collection, Art Museum, Napa Valley, California Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C Israel Museum, Jerusalem, IsraelJardin des Tuileries, Paris, France Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis, Missouri Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California Ludwig Museum, Cologne, GermanyMusée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, FranceMusée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FranceMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, México City, MéxicoMuseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, SpainMuseum of Arts and Design, New York, New YorkMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IllinoisMuseum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FloridaMuseum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, New York Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan

Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, GermanyMuzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, PolandMuzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, JapanNasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TexasNational Gallery of Art, Washington, D.CNational Museum, Stockholm, SwedenNational Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South KoreaNational Museum of Modern Art, Pusan, South Korea Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, GermanyNelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MissouriPhoenix Art Museum Sculpture Garden, Phoenix, ArizonaPortland Art Museum, Portland, OregonPrinceton University Art Museum, Princeton, New JerseyProvinciehuis Noord-Brabant, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the NetherlandsRunnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California Seoul Olympic Park, Seoul, South KoreaSezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, JapanSonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South KoreaStedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the NetherlandsStorm King Art Center, Mountainville, New YorkThe Museum of Modern Art, New York, New YorkThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New YorkTate Modern, London, EnglandToledo Art Museum, Toledo, OhioWalker Art Center, Minneapolis, MinnesotaWestern Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, D.CWilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, GermanyWilliam H. Van Every Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, North CarolinaWoman’s Club of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WisconsinVirginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia

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© 2013 Marlborough Gallery, Inc. ISBN 978-0-89797-450-9

//

Important Works available by: Twentieth-Century European Masters; Post-War American Artists

editor / Tara Reddides ign / Maeve O’Reganproduct ion / Dan McCann, Laura Stewart, Annie Rochfort

photography / Bill Orcutt

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back cover :

Anonim 2, 2009 bronze18 3/4 x 8 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.47.6 x 21.6 x 24.1 cm

Anonim 3, 2009 bronze18 3/4 x 9 1/2 x 10 3/4 in.47.6 x 24.1 x 27.3 cm

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a survey: 1987 - 2009

Documents

Magdalena Abakanowicz, A Survey: 1987-2009