Abakanowicz, Magdalena (1930—)

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Abakanowicz, Magdalena (1930—)

Polish sculptor. Name variations. Marta Abakanowicz-Kosmowska. Born in Falenty, Poland, on June 20, 1930; daughter of a Polish mother who descended from landed knights and a Russian father who escaped the Bolshevik revolution; studied at Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, 1950–55, granted M.A., 1955; married Jan Kosmowski (a civil engineer), in 1956.

Instructor, State College of Arts in Poznan, 1965–74, associate professor, 1974—. Awards: first prize from the Polish Ministry of Culture (1965); gold medal from the Polish Artists' Union (1965); gold medal from the VIII Sao Paulo Bienal, Brazil (1965); grand prize of the Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1970); state prize of the Polish Folk Republic (1972); honorary doctorate, Royal College of Art, London (1974); golden cross of merit from the Polish Folk Republic (1974).

Selected works:

Abakans; Black Garment (1969); a series called Alterations, which includes Heads (1975), Seated Figures (1974–79), Backs, and Embryology (1978–81); Katharsis (1985); War Games; Trunks; Arboreal Architecture; Wheel and Rope; Marrow Bone (1987); Zyk (1989); Winged Trunk (1989); Anasta (1989); Great Ursa; Infantes (1992); Circus (1992).

Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in a 32-room mansion on the outskirts of Warsaw into the aristocratic world of 1930 Poland, nine years before Hitler's troops marched in and laid claim to the country. In her prose poem "Portrait X 20," she describes her stern father and aloof mother, and the solace she found in the woods and fields of Falenty. "For hours I looked at the grass and the water," she said. "I wanted to subordinate myself to them, so that I might understand the mysteries that separated me from them."

When the Germans invaded in 1939, her father joined the Polish Resistance; their house became a refuge for partisans and Jews; and Magdalena learned to shoot. In 1943, when drunken Wehrmacht soldiers entered the house, firing at random, her mother's right arm was severed by a bullet. The following year, with the Soviet Army advancing into Poland, the family moved into Warsaw for safety just before the Warsaw Uprising of August–September. During the two months of bloody fighting, when the Polish Home Army was defeated by Germans in all-out warfare, 14-year-old Magdalena Abakanowicz served as a nurse's aide in an improvised hospital. Memories of pain, death, and disfigurement would accompany her throughout life. At war's end, her parents sold what was left of their household on the black market and opened a newspaper stand.

One repressive regime followed another, and at the close of the war and the ouster of the Nazis, Poland was occupied by the Soviet army. By 1947, Polish Communists had taken full control, and deputy prime minister Wladyslaw Gomulka helped crush non-Communist political parties. As minister of the recovered territories, he established Polish control over regions annexed

from Germany. This involved deporting large portions of the population: under Gomulka's direction, 5,000 people a day were sent westward to Germany at the start of 1946.

Abakanowicz longed to take up art but first had to overcome parental objection as well as Stalin's ban of prewar bourgeoisie from attending universities. Concealing her family history, she entered an art school in Sopot, on the Baltic coast, in 1949. A year later, she attended Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts. While living with families who took her in, she supported herself by giving blood. She also worked nights, holding a lantern for men who repaired streetcar lines. Communism's restrictions infiltrated everything, including the academic atmosphere. "Socialist realism," a kind of propaganda-art with paintings of peasants smiling into the sun, dominated Soviet academies. But completion of her courses was a prerequisite for joining the Polish Artists' Union and working as a sculptor.

Despite the oppressive atmosphere, Abakanowicz graduated in 1954. Two years later, with the help and encouragement of weaver and tapestry artist Maria Laszkiewicz , Abakanowicz's work was entered into the First International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne, Switzerland. The works from Poland "started a movement," recalled Abakanowicz. Lausanne gallery owner Pierre Pauli "understood immediately the search for freedom that we Polish artists represented in our work, a search for a new expression, for the participation of fiber in contemporary conceptualist sculpture and painting." When Pauli died in 1971, his wife Alice Pauli became the main commercial agent for Magdalena's work.

In the early 1960s, Abakanowicz turned to organic materials like burlap, rope, and thread, developing an individualistic, rebellious vision of human freedom. "My intention was to extend the possibilities of man's contact with a work of art through touch and by being surrounded by it," she told Contemporary Artists. "I have looked to those slowly growing irregular forms for an antidote against the brilliance and speed of contemporary technology. I wanted to impose a slower rhythm on the environment as a contrast to the immediacy and speed of our urban surroundings."

"While many of Abakanowicz's works are purely abstract," writes Nancy Heller , "her most haunting sculptures represent fragmented human figures. Such works as Heads (1975), a group of ovoid burlap shapes, each four feet high, placed on end on a gallery floor, or Seated Figures (1974–79), a row of eighteen headless burlap bodies, reflect a curious combination of savagery and calm. Their crudely sown seams and escaping stuffing underscore the impression of violence." Her 1985 work Katharsis comprising 33 bronze figures, standing alone though herded together, is said to be suggestive of endless mourning. John Dornberg called the piece "haunting, anguished, personal art charged with energy and emotions that jar the senses."

"We find out about ourselves only when we take risks, when we challenge and question," Abakanowicz told Dornberg. "I was searching for the greatest risk; to make art of something that is not considered art." Each figure in a group is sculpted by hand. "I select [the material] with my hands," she notes. "I shape it with my hands. My hands transmit my energy to it. In translating idea into form, they always pass on to it something that eludes conceptualization. They reveal the unconscious." Her pieces require years of work. Embryology was completed in four years, Seated Figures in five.

Abakanowicz maintains that there are as many ways to view her work as there are viewers. To some, Backs may evoke Auschwitz, to others a ritual in Bali or Poland's Solidarity movement. While acknowledging that all of her work is concerned with human problems, she wants the precise meaning to vary with each person. "When I leave them to the imagination of people, I am never disappointed by the reception. Only, people today are afraid to judge or understand such objects in their own way. We have got accustomed to having everything explained, explained and explained away."

The works of Magdalena Abakanowicz can be seen in over 40 museums, including the Muzeum Narodowe (Warsaw); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Nationalmuseum (Stockholm); Kustindustrimuseet (Oslo); Musee des Beaux-Arts (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland); Malmo Museum (Sweden); Kunsthalle (Mannheim, Germany); Museum of Modern Art (New York); Museum of Contemporary Crafts (New York); Museu de Arte Moderna (Sao Paulo, Brazil); Bank of America (San Francisco); Australian National Gallery (Canberra); Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art (Japan); Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); and Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago).