Hangzhou Triennial Of Fiber Art

Born in 1930 to an aristocratic family that lived outside of Warsaw, Abakanowicz witnessed first the privations of World War II and then life under the communist regime. She began her career in Warsaw in 1956 as a painter, and in the 1960s gained attention for a series of expressionistic hanging sculptures made of fiber and textiles.

She turns the time-honored wall tapestry into a sisal relief, also woven but no means a wall tapestry in the traditional sense. Abakanowicz went on to become one of the main personalities at the Lausanne Biennial.

First came the ‘Abakans’, so-called after her own name, enormous three-dimensional hanging structures, woven form a variety of fibers. Other soft works included ‘Heads’, ‘Seated figures’, ‘Backs’ these were the seated or standing figures, backs, hands, heads and ‘Embryology’ - a sequence of stuffed potato-shaped forms of varying sizes, covered with sacking and occasionally spilling their innards.

Later she turned to metal constructions, making standing figures, backs, hands and heads. In the 1980s she worked in steel, and then began her bronzes and sculptures of stone. Abakanowicz changed the meaning of sculpture from object to look at into space to experience.

Statement

“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.

Banished from Paradise, man found himself confronted by the space of the world. It was a territory unknown and inconceivable as inconceivable as are overabundance and emptiness. He tried to reach unknown powers, raising stones, building areas of special meanings…

Sometimes, when I leave my studio at the end of the day, I think that after I close the door, something will go on.”

From the statement delivered by Magdalena Abakanovicz during the ceremony of conferring her the Award of International Sculpture Center for the Life Achievements. New York 2005.05.10

Link to the web cite of Magdalena Abakanowicz.

http://www.abakanowicz.art.pl