Magdalena Abakanowicz

Acclaimed Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz was best known for her large-scale textile sculptures and installations that explore themes of humanity, identity and the collective experience. Celebrated as ‘the godmother of installation art’, Abakanowicz pioneered the art form and created experiential environments.

Abakanowicz was born in 1930 in Falenty, Poland. She and her family were forced to flee their country estate in World War II once Communist rule was imposed on Poland by the Soviet Union. They finally settled in an apartment in Warsaw, the city where Abakanowicz would attend the Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 20. Discouraged by her professors from pursuing painting, she turned to weaving instead.

During that time, working with fabric gave Abakanowicz considerable creative freedom, while painters then had to work under the state-approved style of Social Realism. In the 1960s, she began experimenting with textiles, leading to the creation of her radial set of tapestries know as ‘Abakans’. These tapestries are monumental strings of organic forms made from roughly woven fibres. They blurred the boundaries between sculpture and tapestry and marked a significant departure from traditional textile art, winning Abakanowicz the Grand Prize at the 1965 São Paulo Biennale.

Over the course of her career, Abakanowicz expanded into other mediums, such as bronze, stone, wood and clay. After the Abakans, Abakanowicz moved onto series in which she surveyed the human body, including Heads (1973–75), Seated Figures (1976) and Backs (1976–82). These sculptures feature a group of anonymous figures arranged in geometric order and — depending on the series — distinguished by being headless, limbless, sexless or expressionless.

Magdalena Abakanowicz died in 2017 in Warsaw, aged 86. Her innovative approach to materials and form made her a key figure in contemporary art, and her work has been widely exhibited around the world. Her work Agora is permanently installed in Grant Park in Chicago. In 2022 Tate Modern held a major retrospective of the artist’s work.