Magdalena Abakanowicz | Unrepeatability: Abakan to Crowd by Marlborough Gallery

MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ

1. The artist, 2000

UNREPEATABILITY ABAKAN TO CROWD

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense By unrepeatability within such a quantity By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species in which each individual, while subser vient to the mass retains some distinguishing features Magdalena Abakanowicz

WHEN CURATING FACES HISTORY Mary Jane Jacob

Since childhood, Magdalena Abakanowicz has felt the necessity to tell her story through her work, compelled by human amnesia that allows tragedy to be a way of life. Her meanings are embodied in her materials: woven fiber, that was revolutionary in her hands in the early sixties, then molding it in the seventies; drawings that she reengaged in the early eighties as a media that could hold the energy of her ideas about nature, at first human but then other beings; bronze and mediums cast with the vigor of possibility finally afforded by improved working circumstances, yet always with her direct touch, never duplicating a form but creating for each work its own host; wood, clay, plaster, and metal that she returned to at times and in combination with other substances—and each a sensory experience at once real in its tactile nature and transformative power. The exhibition on the occasion of the artist’s 85th birthday celebrates her creative production, her personal expression as well as her faith in the endurance of culture. It represents a survey of sorts, beginning with her 1978 Abakan Last. Even before this final exemplar of the signature work that had brought her to international acclaim in the 1965 Bienal de São Paulo, Abakanowicz had begun to explore the use of burlap cloth to convey the tissue and trauma of everyday life. Heads (1973-75), first called Schizoid Heads, dramatically materialize that subject. In the seventies and eighties, the body in burlap, at once particular yet unidentified, began to populate her oeuvre. Crowd III (1989) and Figure in Iron House (1989-90) are testaments to the power and poignancy that she fashioned from this humble medium. Her discovery of bronze for herself, culminated in such grouping as Walking Figures and Standing Figures (2000) and particularly the forty children Bambini (199899)— all meditations on the human form. Among the solitary figures which she later explored, The Son of Gigant (2003) and Winged Brother and Sister (2005-06) are outstanding exemplars.

2. Bodies (1981-82), Wheel and Rope (1973), and Faces (1981-82), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1982 5

This artist has always been an observer of the humanity and inhumanity of people, which she feels compelled to return to time and again. They are at the center of the story she tells. Still she reminds us that we are alone in the world, and the planet we share with other living things deserves our respect. So by the nineties she increasingly probed the life forms of animals and birds, using materials familiar to her by then, joined with those left behind by the subjects’ themselves, such as feathers and horns. They are all part of the universe represented here. As those whose reminiscences follow, we have chosen this anniversary of the artist’s birth as a time to remember her. So as curator of her first North American retrospective inaugurated in 1982, and now curator of this exhibition at Marlborough Gallery, New York, I take my turn.

3. Tzrepaki (1980), Polish Pavilion, Venice Biennale 1980

I recall that from the moment I met Magdalena Abakanowicz I knew I was facing greatness—the quality of her art, its vitality and necessity as an expression of self and humanity, her sense of gravity that conveyed art mattered in the world. This was not a sense of greatness based on the imprimatur of the art world; no signs said this would be a hot artist to show. But as it turned out, her work offered a chance to live out the discourses of art of the day, in real time and place. As an emerging curator, this was formative. Thus, to start to organize an exhibition of Magdalena Abakanowicz in the late 70s was to work with a woman artist of conviction at a time when we were still in the thick of feminist battles; to challenge the material edges of artmaking, when art and craft were much debated; and to represent a cultural context that lay outside the contemporary art map that had yet to be redrawn as the notion of a Western center expanded to multiple centers of art globally. I found myself in Warsaw in February 1979 by way of the conjunction of unexpected circumstances. This is often how things happen, of course. In this case it involved being introduced to Abakanowicz’s art through books shared with me by a Detroit Institute of Arts patron, Madelyn Rosen, who wanted to support the contemporary fiber art movement; other curators were not interested, so her last resort was me: a new assistant curator who had just completed a graduateschool internship at the museum. Perusing Jack Lenor Larsen

and Mildred Constantine’s 1973 Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric, Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work leapt out at me, while at the same time it seemed misplaced, hampered by the milieu in which it was presented. She would be the one to pursue, I thought, not the fiber field but this individual, though her mode of working with this material was anything but incidental.1 Another intersection of happenstance that enabled this first visit to the artist’s studio in Poland, was being assigned to courier the museum’s 1916 Matisse painting The Window from Rome. This prompted me to boldly propose I visit Galerie Alice Pauli in Lausanne to see some Abakanowiczs. But as it turned out, the work had been returned to the artist, so I asked to go to meet her.2 As that played out, there was little to actually see because the artist’s tiny studio could not hold any completed works, only a few of those in production; the works that had constituted her Swiss exhibition were in remote storage. Yet this pursuit, nonetheless, brought me face-to-face with Magdalena Abakanowicz, and I began to hear her story and to feel her feverish need to make and bring her messages forward.

4. The artist working on Embryology (1978-1980), 1980

Minutes before I arrived at the Forum Hotel (one of the few places for foreigners in then-Communist Poland and now much transformed as part of the Novotel chain), the PKO Bank Polski across the street suffered (what was reported to be) a devastating gas explosion. Finally making it through an unexplained jumble of traffic, I mistook it for a construction site, as barricades had been hastily erected. Meanwhile many locals believed this prominently sited modernist round building, known as the rotunda office, had been bombed and over the years it became a sign of events to come in the volatile and chaotic atmosphere of that city and country.3 It was also the moment of “the winter of the century,” as it came to be known. We saw men shoveling with only boards nailed to sticks; the artist told us that the prisoners had been taken from jail and students from university to accomplish the task of clearing the streets. In the subzero temperatures, Magda placed one of her knitted caps firmly down on my head before letting me exit her place. But even before we met, being rather naïve and in a blur confounded by cultural unfamiliarity

5. The artist with her mother, c.1990

and literal snow blindness, I called upon arrival to ask if I might come to her studio on Sunday, affording time to do some sightseeing and acclimate. Magdalena quickly retorted: “Sunday is my family day.” Fair enough, we met on Saturday. But when she came to pick me up at the Forum Hotel, from her expression, she clearly was wondering why she was even bothering to meet with this kid-curator at all. Abakanowicz’s studio was a part of the apartment she shared with her husband Jan Kosmowski. When we arrived at the concrete high-rise on ulica Stanów Zjednoczonych (United States Street), part of the state housing system, that was their home, the elevator was out, so we walked up the ten flights.

6. The artist’s first apartment with a studio, Warsaw (1965-89)

I cannot recall today the words we exchanged, but I can say it felt important, and her work spoke of her ideas about art and of the world. But she was cautious in her first twenty minutes of querying me in the studio, testing motives and possible affiliations, so accustomed as she was to surveillance and breaches of privacy. Yet when Magdalena dropped me off back at the hotel, with no institutional mandate or authority, I said: “We should do a retrospective in the US.” The next day, Sunday, she called early to invite me back to spend the afternoon with her and her husband; she made chrusciki (angel wings) and we had tea and talked. We’ve been family ever since. A history of cataclysmic change followed us through the curatorial process of organizing this retrospective. Sensing an impending, even greater loss of freedom at home, I received a letter from Magdalena more than a year-and-a-half before the exhibition commenced, stating: The situation in Poland is very dangerous—like never before. And every day can be the last day of our liberation. In this situation we decided with Alice Pauli to organize the transport of my works to Switzerland. This is the only possibility to make sure that the exhibition you are planning can happen without unexpected difficulties….

7. The artist with her husband, Jan Kosmowski, c.1980

There are real difficulties in my country, but I think I will always be free to go away and work with exhibitions—but to get the works out can become an enormous problem or just impossible and we must send everything as quickly as possible.4

On December 13, 1981, about six months later, martial law was declared in Poland, prompted by the rising power of the unprecedented independent trade union known as the Solidarity which had been founded by Lech Walesa in September 1980. In effect until July 1983, personal tension mounted as we drew nearer the November 1982 opening. At one point the artist’s friend and photographer Artur Starewicz wrote to say that he and Jan were having “problems with obtaining US visas because of our [Solidarity] party membership.” Then added with irony, “The American consulate [will] have to consult Washington if such dangerous persons can get visas to US…. I hope in spite of these obstacles to see you in October in Chicago.”5 Later, at the time of the show, when asked by a New York Times reporter about martial law, the artist said openly, it “has affected the life of everybody; we all suffer from moral pressure. It is like a great illness.”6 This was also a self-reflective moment for Magdalena Abakanowicz. Retrospectives always are as artists look back while curators look through their life’s work. But perhaps the times demanded even something greater. So emerged the artist’s personal writing Portrait x Twenty that later became the genesis of her autobiographical book Fate and Art. Art and life came together through such moments with this show. For those who knew art beyond the mainstream—and for whom life informs art, while art contributes to life— Abakanowicz was both a symbol and aesthetic triumph. One viewer of note was Tom Freudenheim, Director of the Museum Program of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) during the years of the show’s planning and under which this project was awarded a NEA grant. Seeing the exhibition, he wrote: I am still pondering the exhibition, and I am very sorry that I won’t have an opportunity to get a sense of people’s reaction to it. I did go to the Cultural Center to see the early works,7 and was quite overwhelmed by them. The sensibility is so far from what is generally considered permissible by our museums or by our critics, and it reminded me how isolated I had once more become compared to the way I was in the years when I moved and traveled in eastern Europe—now more than ten years ago.

8. The artist installing Abakan Red (1969), Chicago Cultural Center, 1982

9. Black Environment (1970-78) and other Abakans (196774), Chicago Cultural Center, 1982

But I think you have done a great service by bringing the Abakanowicz exhibition to the States. It is their reminder that Rauschenberg’s comment on the gap between art and life is a very American sort of notion.8 Though the plans for this major exhibition had begun in Detroit, a city where it would have found supporters among its Polish ethnic community, I had left that post by 1980 for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. There was no abatement of interest—either from the arts community which, though unfamiliar with the artist’s work, was moved by the images they saw and ready to support the project; or from Polish Chicago which, among the city’s nearly one million residents at that time, was experiencing a new wave of immigration: professionals, artists, and intellectuals coming due to the imposition of martial law.9 In the face of continued striving for political change, at the time of martial law, her show and her presence were a sign of hope. 10. Heads (1973-75) and Seated Figures (1974-79), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1982

Over the subsequent years we have worked together, Abakanowicz and I. I have visited her exhibitions and seen some of her powerful public work. Memorable among them are Katarsis (1985) at Giuliano Gori’s Fattoria di Celle in Santomato di Pistoia, Negev (1987) in Jerusalem, and Backs (1992-93) in Hiroshima. Their freedom of expression and material exploration in bronze and stone would never have been possible without the artist gaining greater political freedom. Yet the human drama, its pain yet invincibility, are no less relevant after the fall of Communism than now, for as Magdalena Abakanowicz knows and has experienced, we are but one cycle in an ongoing story. Knowing her great outdoor works, it seemed an oversight for Chicago not to have a major monument by an artist they had introduced to the art world and welcomed to their city. So in 2006 with Magdalena, I began to plot. She first proposed Hand-Like Trees, an open-work tower that at the top became a hand; it was to be a conclusion to Frank Gehry’s serpentine footbridge (the BP Pedestrian Bridge) that takes one from Millennium Park to another lakefront park to the east (now Maggie Daley Park completed in 2015). She met with Gehry who enthusiastically engaged

the idea, but Gehry had fought then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to keep his bridge in the plans, and Millennium Park had yet to cool down from the stresses of its birthing process, so we moved on. Then Cultural Commissioner Lois Weisberg proposed the south terminus of this lakefront stretch at Roosevelt and Michigan Avenue, and with that Abakanowicz’s largest outdoor work was realized: Agora, 106 nine-feet tall, cast-iron walking figures. At the dedication on a cold, windy November morning in 2006, Mayor Daley acknowledged her contribution with a tear, as he was wont to do. Then spontaneously those gathered from the Polish community broke out singing. I turned to a Polish-American colleague to ask what are they saying; he said: “let her live to be a hundred.” And with this traditional wellwishing song, Sto lat, they thanked the artist.

11. Agora (2006), Grant Park, Chicago

I now thank in return those persons who have contributed their recollections to this publication, as well as the exhibition organizers, Marlborough New York President Pierre Levai and Vice President Tara K. Reddi, and their staff. With them, we say: Let her live to be a hundred.

1. The meaning of cloth as material for art and the conveyance of human subjects would become a leitmotif in my own work through subsequent exhibitions, essays such as “The Material of Memory,” in The Object of Labor (MIT Press and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006), and by curating over twenty commissions for the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia in the latter 1990s. 2. This itinerary evoked the passage of Karol Józef Wojtyła’s rise to Pope John Paul II the year before, who played an essential part in the fall of Communism. 3. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Warsaw_gas_explosion 4. Letter from Magdalena Abakanowicz to Mary Jane Jacob, June 16, 1981, Archives of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 5. Letter from Artur Starewicz to Mary Jane Jacob, undated, Archives of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 6. “Chicago Sees 2 Decades of Abakanowicz Works,” New York Times, November 25, 1982 7. Due to the scale of the work, this exhibition was presented in two venues in Chicago: the Abakans in the Chicago Cultural Center and all other works at the Museum of Contemporary Art 8. Tom Freudenheim to John H. Neff, November 15, 1982, Archives of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 9. This so-called Solidarity immigration of intelligentsia, a third wave in Chicago’s history, continued throughout that decade until democracy in Poland was won. The first wave came to Chicago from the 1850s to 1920s for economic reasons, while the second were persons displaced after World War II. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/982.html

12. The artist, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Jan Kosmowski at the dedication of Agora, 2006

13. The artist with Abakan Red (1969), ZachÄ&#x2122;ta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, 1975 12

UNREPEATABILITY ABAKAN TO CROWD EXHIBITION CURATED BY MARY JANE JACOB

14. Abakan Last, 1978 sisal weaving 113 1/2 x 117 1/2 inches 288.3 x 298.5 cm 14

15. Left: Artubir, 1989-90 bronze 59 x 39 3/8 x 15 3/4 inches 149.9 x 100 x 40 cm 16. Right: Artumaai, 1989-90 bronze 65 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches 166.4 x 16.5 x 37.5 cm 16

17. Left: Artumabi, 1989-90 bronze 61 x 13 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches 154.9 x 34.9 x 50.2 cm 18. Right: Artumafi, 1990 bronze 59 x 5 3/4 x 18 inches 149.9 x 14.6 x 45.7 cm 17

19. Figure in Iron House, 1989-90 burlap, resin, and iron 58 1/4 x 43 3/4 x 35 inches 148 x 111.1 x 88.9 cm 18

20. Bird: Calcik, 1996 iron 89 1/2 x 79 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches 227.3 x 201.9 x 102.9 cm 19

21. The Son of Gigant, 2003 bronze 85 x 121 1/2 x 26 inches 216 x 308.6 x 66 cm 20

22 and 23. Two views with detail of interior: Show Case with â&#x20AC;&#x153;Unknown Object,â&#x20AC;? 1996 iron, glass, feathers, and horns case: 36 5/8 x 29 7/8 x 18 1/8 inches 93 x 75.9 x 46 cm 22

24 and 25. Two views with detail of interior: Show Case with â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sprouting Horns,â&#x20AC;? 1996 iron, glass, and horns case: 36 5/8 x 29 5/8 x 18 1/8 inches 93 x 75.2 x 46 cm 23

26. Heads, 1973-75 burlap and hemp rope, fourteen pieces each ranging from 33 x 20 x 25 7/8 - 42 7/8 x 29 7/8 x 28 inches 84 x 51 x 66 - 109 x 76 x 71 cm 25

27. Left: Winged Sister, 2005-2006 bronze 78 3/4 x 16 7/8 x 31 1/2 inches 200 x 42.9 x 80 cm 28. Right: Winged Brother, 2005-2006 bronze 78 3/4 x 20 7/8 x 31 1/2 inches 200 x 53 x 80 cm 26

29. Standing Figures, 2000 bronze ten figures, each 66 1/4 x 20 1/4 x 14 1/4 inches 168.3 x 51.4 x 36.2 cm 29

30. Bambini, 1998-99 bronze forty figures, each 43 x 15 x 10 inches 109.2 x 38.1 x 25.4 cm 31

31. Walking Figures, 2000 bronze ten figures, each 65 5/8 x 20 3/8 x 31 1/4 inches 166.7 x 51.8 x 79.4 cm 33

32. Crowd III, 1989 burlap and resin fifty figures, each 66 7/8 x 21 5/8 x 17 3/4 inches 169.9 x 54.9 x 45.1 cm 35

33. The artist working on model for Hand-Like Trees (1992-93), Venturi Foundry, Bologna, Italy, 1992 36

ESSAYS AND REFLECTIONS ON THE OCCASION OF THE 85TH BIRTHDAY OF MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ

Joseph Antenucci Becherer • Juan Manuel Bonet • Michael Brenson David R. Collens • James Demetrion • Giuliano Gori Agnes Gund • Eleanor Heartney • Mariusz Hermansdorfer Donald Hess • Gintaras Karosas • Suzanne Landau Jack Lenor Larsen • Frances Morris • Peter Murray Elyn Y. Park • Barbara Rose • Milada Slizinska Jeremy Strick • Yuso Takezawa • Angela Vettese

BARBARA ROSE

Memories of Magdalena

Art historian and art critic New York

One day in 1981, I picked up the phone and the voice on the other end said: “This is Magdalena Abakanowicz. We are in telepathic communication.” As strange as it may sound, it was true. I had been collecting images of her work wherever I saw it exhibited, which was mainly in Europe. In 1982, a retrospective curated by Mary Jane Jacob opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago with an important illustrated catalogue. The work was so original and powerful that Magdalena was immediately recognized internationally as a singular artist. I wanted to know more about this powerful Polish artist who, despite the fact that the Iron Curtain cut Poland off from the world, had managed to show at least some of her early work in the West, presenting immense, heavily textured works woven of coarse dyed sisal fiber made out of used industrial rope that she had separated into skeins that could be woven. As tapestries, they could be absorbed into the harmless category of “craft” and, thus, exhibited in the West. These works, which came to be called Abakans, were very large and intended to be seen in a group, like trees in a forest, although like all her works they were related to the human body. Abakans was a play on the artist’s last name, as well as a reference to the proud legend of her family descended from the powerful Abaka-Khan, a thirteenth-century Mongolian chieftain. With her almond shaped eyes, prominent cheekbones, and broad face, Magdalena retained the look of a Tartar. Her mother descended from Polish nobility and her father fled Communist Russia after the October Revolution.

34. The artist with Barbara Rose, the Negev desert, 1987

On a stopover between Chicago and Warsaw she was able to come to dinner at my SoHo loft. Abakanowicz was as impressive as her work—and as honest and demanding. Like her work, she seemed larger than life. When she got back to Warsaw she called to invite me to her studio to see recent work. I told her I couldn’t because the last words of my father, who suffered the worst years of anti-Semitism in Warsaw where he was born and lived, were: “Promise me you’ll never go to Warsaw.” Magdalena was insistent: “So, he was such a good father?” “No he wasn’t,” I replied. “So then, you are coming to Warsaw.”

The Cold War was still going on and it wasn’t so easy to make the trip. When I got off the LOT airline propeller plane, Magdalena greeted me with, “So how do you like the Moulin Rouge? That is what we call these Russian planes here.” She could be very funny, but I guess one would have to say, given the circumstances, hers was often black humor. Her studio was a crowded room in the small apartment she shared with her husband Jan, a handsome, charming intellectual engineer who kissed my hand. I realized that the way the Polish nobility into which Magdalena was born preserved their sense of dignity by continuing the custom of this greeting. Warsaw in 1982 was bleak and gray and still suffering terrible shortages of food and lodging. She took me to the beautiful wooded country estate outside Warsaw where she was born; the stately mansion still stands. She told me how when the Nazis invaded and deported the Jews, they also attacked the Polish aristocracy and shot her mother’s arm off when she was nine years old. She showed me a sculpture made of heavy twine in the form of a hand. There is no way, really, to understand her work and its profound universality without knowing about the trauma she endured as a child living in occupied Poland during World War II.

35. The artist’s birthplace, Falenty, Poland

At that time Magdalena had just finished the group of Backs, bowed headless figures cast in burlap; they were stacked inside each other in a vertical pile that reached almost to the ceiling. A decade later this series in bronze would eventually be installed in Hiroshima. I also saw Abakans rolled up against the wall and became convinced that some day I would find a way to show them, and on a trip to Budapest with Magdalena I did see a large and impressive installation of the monumental black Abakans. I worked very closely with Magdalena on a monograph published by Abrams in 1984. We kept in contact and I continued to follow her work closely. When the Berlin wall finally came down, she was freer to show in New York, but she had no gallery. I felt the only dealer who could understand the complexity of her work was Xavier Fourcade, who represented only a handful of artists: Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Joan Mitchell.

36. The artist’s studio with Backs (1976-82), Warsaw, 1980

Xavier was brilliant, intense, and as tough as Magdalena. They got along very well, but unfortunately he died, and Magda was left without a gallery in New York. The only gallery I thought that was established enough, international enough, and encyclopedic enough to handle her work was Marlborough Gallery. I introduced Magdalena to Pierre Levai, and they immediately had an understanding. Frank Lloyd, the founder of Marlborough, was still alive at the time and he, too, was very enthusiastic about her work to the point that they became good friends. I tagged along on a trip to Nassau with Magdalena and her family arranged by Frank Lloyd. He took us out on his fishing boat, and it was a very happy time. And I remember that Magdalena, who was very athletic, was a great swimmer.

37. The artist carving Styrofoam model for Katarsis (1985), Venturi Foundry, Bologna, 1985

I was living in Italy in the eighties and had gotten to know Giuliano Gori, the great Florentine collector who established an amazing sculpture park at the Fattoria di Celle near Pistoia. I went with Magdalena when she inspected the large park with works by famous artists from around the world. The park was fenced in on one side, and there was a barren field on the other. Magdalena told Gori this was where she would install her work. Gori was perplexed because the area was not really inside the area of the sculpture park. Magdalena explained, “I go out there. I am outside.” And so she began casting the group of standing figures in the Venturi bronze factory that would eventually be installed at Celle in 1986. These figures were headless, too, but they were giants, standing at attention in rows, each one different but all obeying some far-off command. The work is such a powerful metaphor for human suffering and also for human conformity that no one who sees it can fail to be moved. Bronze casting was an entirely new technique for Magdalena, and she invented a new way to do it using rubber molds that left impressions within the figures whose “guts,” so to speak, were exposed. I would go to the casting foundry directed by Signora Venturi, an imposing figure herself, to watch Magdalena work. Thirty-three threemeter tall human torsos cast in bronze became the work Katarsis (1985).

I made many trips to see Magdalenaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works, but the one I remember best was to Jerusalem in 1987 for her installation of her stone sculpture Negev. Made of seven immense stone circles, the discs had actually been ground by the Berber tribesmen who lived in the desert where we visited them. Once again, Magdalena refused to stay in the confines of the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden designed by Isamu Noguchi at the Israel Museum. She had figured out a system of having a strut that was invisible carved on the bottom of the discs so that they could be installed on the top of a hilltop, looking as if they could come crashing down at any moment. The drama was intense and the piece unforgettable. We traveled around Israel in the desert, but it was at the exact moment of the outbreak of the first Intifada. Neither of us imagined what terrible events would follow. In Paris, Magdalena was chosen to create an architectural project for the new area of La Defense. Her ecological concept of arboreal architecture was brilliant, but unfortunately in 1991 it was too advanced for the local city planners. Her intention was to have tree-shaped buildings eventually covered in greenery over time. She tried again to construct an architectural sculpture in Hiroshima, but that, too, was not ultimately realized. But she was not discouraged from doing increasingly demanding large-scale projects, and in 2006 she made Agora in Chicago, a crowd of 106 nine-foot tall iron cast figures, again each different and yet each having common characteristics as does the whole human race. At the opening I could imagine this crowd enduring long after we were gone.

38. Agora (2006), Grant Park, Chicago

I finally was able to show a work by Magdalena in an important exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofĂa in Madrid in Monochromes, from Malevich to the Present, which I curated in 2004. It was a giant red Abakan that in many ways stole the show. Most of the living artists who came from all parts of the world came to the opening and so did Magdalena. I was happy that she seemed pleased with the installation.

AGORA GRANT PARK CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

39. Agora, 2006 cast iron 106 figures, each 108 inches 270 cm 42

GIULIANO GORI Founder Fattoria di Celle – Collezione Gori Santomato di Pistoia, Italy

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Roots at Celle Today thirty-three life-size figures—those bronze profiles standing like hollow trunks “rooted just like olive trees to the earth” to which Magdalena Abakanowicz gave the name of Katarsis—are quite rightly marking the eighty-fifth birthday of their creator. In spite of the violent wind storm of March 4 of 1985, which crippled the Fattoria di Celle by felling 315 olive trees and over 200 centuries-old trees in the park, the physical and spiritual strength of Katarsis resisted: today it shows no trace of the terrible impact. As if that wasn’t enough, another one of Magdalena’s large sculptures, Hand-Like Tree, not only went unscathed, but even served as a defense against nature’s immense power and saved, on its own, a good number of other trees. My first meeting with Magdalena’s work dates back to the Venice Biennale of June 1980. Still today I relive that memory with great emotion because of the intense effect it had on me. I left certain that I wanted to meet her immediately in order to invite her to Pistoia where the site-specific art project was already underway at the Fattoria di Celle. Despite my personal insistence and the involvement of mutual friends, like Dani Karavan and Pierre Restany, I had to wait more than four years before I could show her the spaces at Celle. Magdalena did arrive on January 2, 1985—the year of the great cold spell in Tuscany—and she worked until September 30 to finish her artwork. The nine months spent completing the Katarsis installation were the same amount of time needed for infant gestation. Throughout that period we were able to exchange ideas, to get to know each other, and to establish a unique friendship that has generated unexpected experiences over the years.

40. The artist with Giuliano Gori

Once she had experimented with all the materials possible, from stone and marble to fiberglass and aluminium, Magdalena turned to use bronze for the first time, accepting in this way to make an outdoor installation. It was a first time for me as well to allow a work to be built outside the nineteenthcentury context of the historical park, where it would occupy a farmland area surrounded by olive trees.

From that moment on, Magdalenaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tenacity and firm character, together with my determination and conviction, sprang an intense relationship of reciprocal affection and esteem. Indeed after 1985 we enjoyed many more important moments together, including an exhibition in 2000 held at Celle entitled Working Process. In this magnificent show we displayed for the first time a large number of models that the artist had used in the foundry to realize artworks that are by now found in major museums the world over. Two years later we decided to publish the book, Working Process e non solo, in which our own contributions appeared alongside texts by Abraham M. Hammacher, Jasia Reichardt, and Barbara Rose. It was actually our second book together; the first one was Katarsis in 1987 edited by Pierre Restany. We also carried out other projects together, such as the production of two series of wax etchings and the realization of other bronze sculptures situated in the park at Celle. Magdalena is even present inside the farm building with her self-portrait from the Incarnations series (1987-88). This piece is shown near a small cell-like room in which two jute figures can also be spied through a small opening. Moreover, a multitude of figures of adults and children in fiberglass complete her widespread presence at Celle.

41. Arcadia in Celle exhibition, Kamakura Museum, Japan 1999

And now, I say to the artist: Dear Magdalena, I just got back from Venice and I still have, in my mind and my heart, the image of your magnificent exhibition on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Once again emotion got the upper hand: you never disappoint our expectations. You once wrote that Katarsis is made of a material more enduring than our lives, which could only come into being at Celle in that landscape in which it would remain as a permanent part. Like me, you too, were born in 1930, and together with other friends born at the same time, we decided to plant a wood at Celle where each friend would choose a tree species to represent himself. You chose the Platanus or plane tree, and I chose the sequoia and, as I have had occasion to write previously, those trees symbolize the past, present, and future of our relationship, which can only continue to thrive. As I attempt to testify here, your presence at Celle for over thirty years represents the fulcrum of an unsurpassable creativity. It is with pride and sincere affection that I send you my heart-felt best wishes for a long and fruitful future. Yours, Giuliano May 18, 2015

KATARSIS FATTORIA DI CELLE SANTOMATO DI PISTOIA, ITALY

42. Katarsis, 1985 bronze thirty-three figures, each 106 1/4 x 39 1/4 x 19 3/4 inches 270 x 100 x 50 cm 46

SUZANNE LANDAU Director and Chief Curator Tel Aviv Museum of Art Tel Aviv, Israel

I was touched and honored that Magdalena asked me to say a few words tonight when she is receiving the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It is of course an occasion to acknowledge the breath of Magdalena’s entire work. Yet I would rather talk about one particular work; the monumental Negev that Magdalena created in Jerusalem— and about our friendship, which started almost twenty years ago when I invited her to come and create a new piece in our Billy Rose Art Garden designed by Isamu Noguchi. There were neither diplomatic relationships between Poland and Israel at that time, nor Internet and e-mails. Therefore, the communication at the beginning was a bit slow. My letter was on route via Switzerland for several months, until finally I received the much-expected reply. Magdalena wrote: For many years I had a desire to visit your country, but circumstances were not favorable. Your letter evoked thoughts, images and feelings (my childhood, war time)… I would like to make a group of figures, cast from concrete…. The intention I have is to bring a message about human condition, about the relation between mankind and nature. Since you began to write to me all my thoughts are with your museum. …I would like to see the whole space around it, the whole atmosphere, the nature, the desert.

43. Installation of Negev, 1987

When she finally arrived, the very first day we were walking around the museum, and Magdalena, impressed by the powerful impact of the local limestone, categorically declared: “Suzanne, forget about the proposal we were discussing in our correspondence. I am going to do an entirely different sculpture from stone!” And she proposed a group of seven wheels, each more than nine feet in diameter, to be installed dramatically on the very edge of the Hill of Tranquility—the site where the Israel Museum and its sculpture garden were built. Indeed, Magdalena immediately grasped the spirit and the essence of the place she just had encountered. For an artist who was best known for her Abakans—soft, three-dimensional forms woven from thick fabrics—and her hollow figures made from burlap, fiber, or bronze, this decision was quite radical. The search for a suitable quarry where the

almost impossible task to cut discs of such a dimension in one piece would be solved, brought her to Mitzpeh Ramon deep in the Negev desert. There her new and perhaps most abstract work, consisting of seven ten-ton stone wheels came out of the soil. The spiritual experience of the barren desert—carved by relentless dry winds, with its starry deep nights, unsheltered solitude, silence of the rocks, mixed with the sweet tea of the workers of the quarry—was for Magdalena unforgettable and unique. It, nevertheless, thoroughly saturated her grand sculpture that she has given a name Negev and also our friendship, which is so precious to me. Magdalena’s art not only has three dimensions, but also many layers of meaning, bursting energy, existential reflections, and high poetic and metaphoric tension. Her Negev evokes associations with local olive crushing, with millstones, and with the prehistoric shores of the Mediterranean where the wheel was in use very early on. The seven-wheeled sculpture also alludes symbolically to the seven days of Creation, to the seven ancient gates of Jerusalem, to the cult of sun, to wholeness and perfection, and even to the monumental and enigmatic stone circle in Stonehenge. Its impact on the Billy Rose Art Garden is striking. It is one of the most treasured works identified with the Garden and, therefore, it has become its icon.

44. The artist with Mayor Teddy Kolleck, Jerusalem, at the inauguration of Negev, 1987

From a speech delivered on the occasion of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, 2005, when Suzanne Landau was chief curator of fine arts and curator of contemporary art at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

45. Negev (1987)

NEGEV THE BILLY ROSE ART GARDEN ISRAEL MUSEUM JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

46. Negev, 1987 limestone seven disks, each 110 1/4 x 23 5/8 inches 280 x 60 cm 50

ELYN Y. PARK Chief Curator Seoul Olympic Museum of Art Seoul, South Korea

In commemoration of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, 220 large-scale sculptures from 155 artists representing sixty-six different countries were installed at the Seoul Olympic Park. Among them, Magdalena Abakanowiczâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Space of Dragon (1998) is one of the works that truly represents the spirit of the Olympics by overcoming barriers of geography, language, culture, and politics, and by evoking harmony between human and nature. Upon spacious meadows, the dragons hold their heads up while firmly rooted to the ground. According to our records, Space of Dragon required a production team of 594 workers, 12.8 tons of bronze, five tons of clay, and eighty blocks of gypsum. Just looking at these numbers, one can appreciate the overwhelming scale of the project. As the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first large-scale cultural endeavor, the lack of experienced workers and differences in cultural perspectives and language would have, no doubt, proved difficult and frustrating. However, the ongoing appreciation of this work after its installation thirty years ago confirms its significance in the civic memory of a nation slowly repairing itself.

47 and 48. The artist working on Space of Dragon (1988), Seoul, 1988

SPACE OF DRAGON SEOUL OLYMPIC MUSEUM OF ART SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

49. Space of Dragon, 1988 bronze ten heads, each 90 1/2 x 98 1/2 x 157 1/2 inches 230 x 250 x 400 cm 53

MARIUSZ HERMANSDORFER Former Director Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu Wrocław, Poland

I met Magdalena Abakanowicz in 1979 in Brazil while organizing the Polish section at the Bienal de São Paulo, during which I also presented works of the winners of previous exhibitions. Magda, who received the gold medal in 1965 for a group of Abakans, was nominated by the Polish Ministry of Culture to represent the community of artists and to help in the organization of the exhibition. After the opening of the Biennale I suggested visiting a few other cities: Rio de Janeiro, Ouro Preto, and Brasilia. Working and traveling together enabled us to get to know each other better and to strike up a friendship. Since then, I have participated in the organization of some of her exhibitions, published articles in catalogues, and become a member of the foundation that was established by Magda and her husband Jan Kosmowski. In 1988, I participated in her retrospective exhibition in the Műcsarnok in Budapest by writing a piece for the exhibition’s catalogue, and in 1991 I was engaged in the organization of another retrospective presentation in a few cities in Japan (Tokyo, Shiga, Mito, and Hiroshima). Then together with the artist I also arranged her room in the Tate Modern Gallery in London. It has been my initiative now to create a thorough review of the life and work of the artist, together with a catalogue raisonné of her artworks to be published under the auspices of the foundation and the National Museum in Wrocław.

50. The Cage, 1981

Apart from cooperating with Magda Abakanowicz on her exhibitions and publishing texts in catalogues of exhibitions in various cities, I also presented works of the artist in individual and group exhibitions that I organized. At the same time I acquired many works for the collection in the National Museum in Wrocław. As a consequence, Wrocław has the largest collection of works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, including numerous Abakans from the 1960s, compositions from the cycle of Alterations (Seated Figures, Backs, Embryology), Standing Figures, The Wheel with Rope, Trunks, The Cage, Anonymous Portraits, War Games, as well as metal Birds and King Arthur’s Court. This collection, presented on permanent view both inside and outside the Museum, gives a thorough representation of the artist’s work.

As I wrote in the 2011 publication Collection of Contemporary Art of the National Museum in WrocĹ&#x201A;aw about her work: Returning many times to the same problems and truths, she creates forms whose meanings are ambiguous and structures complex, and then uses them to create a particular kind of space. Approached by the artist at the same time analytically and intuitively, the world of dreams and unfulfilled childhood, brutally interrupted by the war, is complemented by her keen perception of modern life and expressed through forms that have much in common. It is only the consistency of the material used and the settings that change. Now enclosed, now open, integrated into nature. Driven by her fascinations, Abakanowicz systematically expands the range of experiments, trying to penetrate the inaccessible and comprehend the incomprehensibleâ&#x20AC;Ś

51. The artist with Embryology (1978-1980), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1982

52. The artist working on War Games (1987-1993), Mazury Lake District, Poland, 1989 56

MICHAEL BRENSON Writer New York

Despite their imposing bulk and almost thudding physicality, Magdalena Abakanowiczâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s War Games are visionary works. These massive horizontal tree trunks, many of them with severed limbs, are flights of fancy, bursts of metaphor, expressions of a creative imagination so elemental that they seem to hold within them the full human capacity for love and hate, birth and death. They are weighed down by destruction, but they are also inventions so pure that they can seem as light as a fish in water or a bird in air. At first glance, the War Games are very much like defiant war victims. With their stumps bandaged with burlap or protectively encased in steel, they are exposed and defenseless yet at the same time armed and itching for a fight. They lie broken yet indestructible, impotent yet endowed with imposing phallic power. Wounded and immobilized, these survivors of human and environmental devastation are blessed with an infinite capacity for resistance and regeneration. But the War Games are much more than this. They are stocked with surprises and secrets. One is an abundance of avian and aquatic references. Abakanowicz has referred to the long metal nose of the drill-like Zadra (1987) as a beak. Another of the War Games is called Winged Trunk (1989), which makes it possible to see the semicircular metal blade rising out of the wood as an emblem of flight. Kos (1993), one of the two newest additions to the series, is the Polish word for blackbird; Kuka (1993), the other, suggests the name and song of the cuckoo. Sroka (1992), the Polish word for magpie, is the title of a War Game distinguished by a flamboyant flame-like tail.

53. Marrow Bone, 1987

But the tail of Sroka is also aquatic in its tentacle-like flutter. And the sharp metal projecting angrily from one end of Zyk (1989) suggests a fin, which makes its long extended body like a racing fish. The wooden mass and metal limbs of Anasta (1989) suggest the body and tentacles of a squid. The round, still body of Giver is a bit like a beached manatee. One side of the distended head of Ancestor (1989) suggests another sea mammal, this time a whale. Together these avian and aquatic associations transform the sculptures. Experienced as birds and fish, most of them in motion, the War Games become more active than passive, more carefree than afflicted, less historical

statements of victimization and resistance than scenes of a timeless struggle between oppression and transcendence, confinement and flow. This struggle is heightened by hints of the kind of theatrical and magical performances whose effect depends upon a tension between entrapment and release. The four barrels under Zyk bring to mind the circus barrels lions and tigers spin furiously beneath their feet. The corpse-like Giver seems on the verge of levitation. Each metal band wrapped around Marrow Bone (1987) frames a conical head-like piece of metal, which recalls those magician’s boxes in which a woman is encased up to her neck and ankles and then miraculously, it seems, cut in two. Winged Trunk, with its blade down the center of the wood, suggests another way of cutting a figure in two, from toe to head. In short, the War Games are indeed thumping, forbidding statements about the bottomless cruelty and destructiveness of which human beings are capable. But they are also hymns to the equally unlimited human capacity for enchantment and renewal. Their vitality of metaphor and transformation establishes a clear distinction between the human imagination and what Abakanowicz calls “the imagination of nature.” The War Games begin in nature and take their clues from nature, but the perspective and synthesis they offer is something of which only the human imagination is capable. In the War Games, human beings are nature, but they are a very peculiar product of it that must take responsibility for figuring out what the human place in nature is. Like many of Abakanowicz’s other major works, the War Games ask what on earth human beings are.

54. Anasta, 1989

55. Zyk, 1989

From Magdalena Abakanowicz: War Games (New York, P.S. 1 Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., 1993): 9-11.

WAR GAMES P.S. 1 INSTITUTE FOR ART AND URBAN RESOURCES INC. QUEENS, NEW YORK

56. From left: Zadra (1987), Ancestor (1989), Anasta (1989), Winged Trunk (1989), and Marrow Bone (1987), P.S. 1 Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc. (now MoMA P.S. 1), 1993 60

AGNES GUND Founding Trustee Agnes Gund Foundation President Emerita The Museum of Modern Art, New York

I remember vividly Magdalena’s show at Marlborough over twenty years ago and seeing the works from War Games. I was struck by these monumental structures of massive tree trucks that had their bark and branches removed. They were wrapped with cloth, as though they were wounded and placed on metal lattice pedestals. To me, it was such a profound statement on our relationship to war, to what must have been the artist’s experience living in Soviet-occupied Poland, to how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the natural world. I was very happy to help bring Winged Trunk (1989) from the War Games series into MoMA. I was familiar with Magdalena’s work from the 1970s which began her preoccupation with using the human body as her chief subject. Magdalena’s textile sculptures are so distinctly unique, and I knew earlier works already in the collection like Yellow Abakan (1967-68), Pregnant (1981-82), and a number of remarkable drawings. It was so kind of Magdalena to give the drawings Birth of Fly (1994-97) and Cecyna Flower (1991) to the Museum in 2002 in my honor. Magdalena’s fifty-plus year career has been a terrific journey and what an oeuvre and a legacy she has created, with no signs of slowing down, as her recent show at Richard Gray Gallery just a few years ago can attest! I wish Magdalena a happy and joyous eighty-fifth birthday and send all my very best wishes.

57. From left: Yellow Abakan (1967-68), Winged Trunk (1989), and Pregnant (1981-82), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015 62

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

DONALD M. HESS Founder The Hess Collection Napa Valley, California

A Great Artist Keeping Her Word In 1988, I met Magdalena Abakanowicz for the first time. It was in Warsaw, Poland, where she had a large show of her oeuvre. I was very impressed by the powerful sculpture Zadra (1987) and her many Faces (1986-87) cast in bronze. When I told her that I would like to purchase Zadra, she informed me that she would only sell it to a museum. At the time, the attractive old winery building of The Hess Collection Winery in Napa, California, was designed to become the first museum to host my personal art collection. So, I was happy to tell her that the opening was due in 1989. However, she was doubtful. Apparently, many collectors promised to build a museum for her art, but nobody really did. I made a verbal contract with her, saying that she would visit The Hess Collection Winery in autumn 1989 and not sell Zadra before she would have inspected the new museum. After the completion of the construction work, Magdalena Abakanowicz in fact visited the museum as agreed. The museum was inaugurated but many spaces were still empty. Magdalena chose the best place for Zadra, and it remains still today. To this, we added Crowd 1 (198687) and Abakan Red-Orange (1967-70). Over the time, I acquired fourteen more of her works of art. Thus, we were able to create an impressive permanent exhibition of twelve works within our museum in Napa. Five of her sculptures are placed in my home in Bern, Switzerland. My respect for this artist is really great. In my view, Magdalena Abakanowicz is one of the major contemporary artists and also a rare person, who keeps a promise even in the long term!

58. From left: Zadra (1987), Abakan Red-Orange (1967-70), and Crowd I (1986-87), The Hess Collection, Napa, California 64

THE HESS COLLECTION NAPA VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

DAVID R. COLLENS Director and Chief Curator Storm King Art Center New Windsor, New York

I have several fond memories of Magdalena visiting Storm King. Her first visit was in 1987 to see her eighty-eight burlap Backs (1976-82) installed in the museum for our special figurative sculpture exhibition, The Reemergent Figure: Seven Sculptors at Storm King Art Center. She was impressed with the indoor installation of her work and the landscape at Storm King. A few years later she offered Storm King her large outdoor sculpture Sarcophagi in Glass Houses (1989). Her gift was accepted and plans were finalized to bring the sculpture from storage in Zürich, Switzerland. Abakanowicz returned in 1993 to site the sculpture and develop a special landscape for it in consultation with our co-founder H. Peter Stern, our landscape architect William A. Rutherford, Sr., and me. We shared the same vision with the artist for the installation of her work in the South Fields near a road, so our visitors could easily walk around the large sculpture. Magdalena spoke extensively about Sarcophagi in Glass Houses at a special Storm King event on May 3, 1994 at the University Club in New York. She was a captivating speaker, and the audience listened to her in silence. I remember the tone of her commanding voice and the historic references which she made that provided the inspiration for the sculpture. Her talk still resonates with me. She told how in ancient times a sarcophagus was a coffin of limestone thought to have the property to quickly dissolve its contents—its names originating in the Greek word sarkophagos, meaning flesh eater. But, she went on, “I heard on the news that a sarcophagus will be built for the atomic reactor in Chernobyl in Ukraine. It means that in our times, the sarcophagus has to cover dangerous technology.” In 2000 Magdalena visited Storm King once again. Soon after that visit, she wrote to us and described the beauty she had witnessed: “I remember this day, the 21st of May at Storm King…with the incredibly romantic fog, with the light that changed distances and built an unexpected new landscape.”

59 - 61. Sarcophagi in Glass Houses (1989), Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York 66

Sarcophagi in Glass Houses is part of our permanent collection and is on exhibition. Storm King Art Center’s President, John P. Stern, staff, and I, send our warmest wishes to you Magdalena on your eighty-fifth birthday. Our thoughts are with you on this special day!

SARCOPHAGI IN GLASS HOUSES STORM KING ART CENTER NEW WINDSOR, NEW YORK

62. Sarcophagi in Glass Houses, 1989 wood, glass, and iron overall 102 1/2 x 206 1/2 x 1,719 inches 181.6 x 524.5 x 4366.3 cm 68

JAMES T. DEMETRION Former Director Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington, DC

63. Four on a Bench, 1990 burlap, resin, and wood 71 1/2 x 88 5/8 x 19 inches 181.6 x 225.1 x 48.3 cm 70

In 1992 the Hirshhorn acquired a sculpture by Magdalena Abakanowicz—one which, like so much of her work, is disturbing and powerful—Four on a Bench (1990). It is one of the artist’s burlap pieces in which the material itself, particularly when used as the sole element forming the figures, suggests a meager and dire and mean kind of existence. The four figures stand on a wood beam which itself confines their movement. Indeed, I have always thought of them as having been lined up for possible execution by some external force situated where the viewer stands before them.

FOUR ON A BENCH HIRSCHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN WASHINGTON, DC

JEREMY STRICK Director Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas, Texas

Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years ago, while a junior curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., my regular visit to New York found me entering Marlborough Gallery. There, I was amazed to see gathered across the gallery floor, individual figures and groups of figures, all headless, some standing and others crouched over, all cast in burlap. In addition, there was an enormous sculpture, quite different from the others, the trunk of a tree lying horizontally, its end sheathed by a pointed metal tip—one of the artist’s War Games series. I had not encountered Abakanowicz’s work before and was both deeply moved and intensely curious. Marlborough’s Director, Pierre Levai, furnished me with ample reading material, and as I learned about the artist, I grew increasingly convinced that her work should enter the National Gallery’s collection. The War Games sculpture was brought to Washington for the consideration of the Gallery’s Collectors Committee. While that work wasn’t acquired, other sculpture eventually entered the collection. Now I am fortunate to encounter Abakanowicz’s work most every day, as her Bronze Crowd (1990-91) stands prominently in the garden of the Nasher Sculpture Center. Gazing upon that group of headless figures, I find myself every bit as moved as I was at the moment of my first encounter.

64. Bronze Crowd, 1990-91 bronze thirty-six figures, each 71 1/8 x 23 x 15 1/2 inches 180.7 x 58.4 x 39.4 cm 72

BRONZE CROWD NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER DALLAS, TEXAS

YUSO TAKEZAWA Former Vice-Director Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Hiroshima, Japan

Magdalena took Hiroshima by storm. Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presented an exhibition featuring the works of Magdalena Abakanowicz from September 14 to October 21, 1991. Her visit to the city for that occasion was warmly welcomed by local citizens, including artists, gallerists, and city officials, even though government officials are generally regarded in Japan as inflexible people not very appreciative of cultural matters. Many parties were held to get to know more about this great sculptor. The enthusiasm shown by the people of Hiroshima tells how profoundly they felt spiritual ties with the artist’s unshaken stance toward her works over the years. The sense of heartfelt affinity lasted long after the exhibition ended. A project was conceived in 1993 by the artist and the local citizens to construct a monument for peace called Hand-Like Tower, though it has yet to be realized. However, Hiroshima MOCA purchased for the city a piece from her series Backs. This work, Space of Becalmed Beings, a group of forty bronze figures dating from 1992-93, embodies a clear perspective that Abakanowicz, as an artist, has maintained all her life. This sculptural installation is now situated in the front garden of the museum in accordance with her planning. Those forty figures, with hunched backs, sit in silence facing the southern sky that three planes flew across on that day seventy years ago—one carrying the atomic bomb. In the garden of the museum located on a hill overlooking the city, they quietly mark the passage of time, watching Hiroshima and humankind. If I may refer to a private matter, when she was leaving Hiroshima I gave Magdalena a glass bottle, blue with a tinge of green, which my father, a hibakusha (an atomic-bomb victim), had passed on to me. Exposed to the intense heat, the molten glass was distorted and disfigured. Its unearthly contortion conjured up the horror of the bomb. It was my wish that as a new item added to her collection back in Poland, this small atomic-bombed bottle would do what little it could to speak for the tragedy of Hiroshima.

65. Space of Becalmed Beings, 1992-93 bronze forty figures, each approx. 21 x 24 x 29 inches 84 x 61 x 74 cm 74

“I will keep it in my bedroom,” said Magdalena with tearful eyes. I always recall her words with deep emotion. Nearly twenty-five years have passed since that time. Is the bottle still with her—somewhere close to the eighty-five-year-old artist?

SPACE OF BECALMED BEINGS HIROSHIMA CITY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

PETER MURRAY CBE, Founding and Executive Director Yorkshire Sculpture Park West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

I first saw Magdalena Abakanowicz’s sculpture in the open air on a bitterly cold day in Minneapolis in 1992. Upon leaving the warmth of the Walker Art Center I observed that the previous night’s snow was not helping many sculptures in the garden. Slowly, but surely, however, a ghostly row of headless figures started to emerge from the background, and although their limbs were immersed in snow, Magdalena’s Standing Figures (1994) were the only sculptures whose formidable presence defied the depths of winter in this ice-bound city. The impact was so powerful, I was determined to organize an exhibition of her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Magdalena identified with the spirit of our landscape and the layers of history which gradually formed our historic environment. Apart from the silent armies of life-sized figures, the softer, more assured child-like group called Puellae (199293), the beautiful Birds (1992-95), and the incredibly moving Backward Seated Figures (1992), the exhibition included six of the Hand-Like Tree sculptures (1994-95). Like primeval trees rooted into the grass, these magnificent works set against the sky and interacting with the three-hundred-year-old Cedar of Lebanon and other trees, paid homage to the durability of the natural world. The 1995 exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which included over ninety individual sculptures, was an unforgettable experience for Magdalena and everyone who witnessed it. Her courageous vision, which has outlived many ideologies, has resulted in a consistently powerful and profound body of work. Although every thread of Magdalena’s existence is Polish, her sculpture knows no boundaries. It is truly international, touching a nerve in every culture.

66. Hand-Like Trees, 1994-95 bronze five elements, each 146 x 165 1/4 inches 371 x 420 cm 76

HAND-LIKE TREES YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK WEST YORKSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM

GINTARAS KAROSAS Founder and President Europos Parkas Member, Council of Vilnius Sculptor Vilnius, Lithuania

Magdalena Abakanowicz is a versatile personality. From 1996 to 2009, I had many opportunities to interact with her when realizing several of her works in Europos Parkas. I felt that we had a lot in common, so the topics of our conversations were very broad, and we talked not only about art and her creative ideas. Two works of the artist are installed in Europos Parkas: Space of Unknown Growth (1998) and The Conjuror (2009). In total, Abakanowicz visited us five or six times, and I think I visited her home in Warsaw three times. Perhaps it was because of the intertwined history of Lithuania and Poland that we liked to talk about historical topics. Our conversations over a cup of coffee in the apple tree garden of Europos Parkas or while driving, often revolved around Lithuanian rulers and noblemen, who also ruled the Polish state for a long period of time. She used to say that she knew only two Lithuanians (my wife Lina and me) and, bringing parallels into historical focus, she asked whether all Lithuanians were such individualists capable of changing the world. Perhaps we were connected by our noble origins. I remember Abakanowicz taking off a ring with the Abdank coat of arms from her finger and saying that it was the only thing that remained from her family’s past history, the only relic…. Just as in Poland, where intellectual potential was historically strengthened by engaging the Lithuanian elite in its country’s governance, Europos Parkas was for Abakanowicz an example of what was otherwise an unrealized dream. She had mentioned this dream during our last meeting, on the occasion of the opening of The Conjuror in Europos Parkas in the spring of 2009: her desire to have a permanent outdoor installation of her works in Warsaw. To date, because of bureaucratic hurdles, the Professor has only been to realize her vision of a modern Warsaw art park in the narrow garden adjoining her house on Bzowa Street. The process of turning creative projects into reality was really interesting to her. At first it seemed that she required special treatment, and maybe she was accustomed to such behavior with art curators or managers in other art institutions, but eventually she always understood the conditions offered. As the Professor confessed later, she had doubts that we might

abandon the implementation of the project altogether in Vilnius. I had the same feeling at times. Therefore, both sides tried to maintain an elegant balance. Many coincidences contributed to the work Space of Unknown Growth as it is now. Abakanowicz’s idea was to scatter the forms more randomly and rhythmically, as in her previous works, Abakans. However, the technology I invented for moulding egg or flower-bud forms with surfaces that gave an impression of a natural form, required them to be installed strictly vertically. In the spring of 2008 I brought Abakanowicz from Vilnius Airport to where her work was being assembled. She said that everything was excellent and simply rearranged a few forms. Thinking about Magdalena Abakanowicz, I clearly see that our collaboration has been very meaningful. I also see that what is created in Europos Parkas in Lithuania is very different from the creative spectrum of the artist. It could probably not have been otherwise. Everything was different here; for instance, she never came with her husband who, according to her, usually dealt with the engineering of her installations. It was a wonderful cooperation on an equal footing—the type of cooperation which can take place only between artists who see the world from a similar angle. Abakanowicz’s incredibly diverse and talented personality is memorable. She enjoys her life with the passion of a gambler and without fearing it. I remember that several times, when we rushed to Vilnius Airport, she encouraged me to accelerate. She has told me more than once that she did not go to exhibitions of other artists, however, several times a day she asked me to take her to my work, The Sign, in Europos Parkas.

67. The Conjuror (2009) Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania

Abakanowicz has always been our ambassador in the world, and her works in Europos Parkas brought the neighboring countries closer through the language of art—which is the most appropriate mode of communication between Lithuania and Poland, two countries ever wandering in historical twists and turns.

SPACE OF UNKNOWN GROWTH EUROPOS PARKAS OPEN-AIR MUSEUM OF THE CENTRE OF EUROPE VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

68. Space of Unknown Growth, 1998 concrete twenty-two elements, each 51 1/8-129 7/8 x 63-165 5/8 inches 130-330 x 160-420 cm 80

ELEANOR HEARTNEY Independent cultural critic and author New York

69. 95 Figures,1998-2000 bronze forty figures, each approx. 68 7/8 x 23 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches 175 x 60 x 30 cm fifteen figures, each approx. 59 x 17 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches 150 x 45 x 30 cm forty figures, each approx. 42 x 14 x 10 inches 106.7 x 35.6 x 25.4 cm 82

The sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz explore the tensions that exist between the individual and the crowd, the political and the spiritual, the tragic and the comic. I have seen her powerful works in many contexts, but one experience that stays with me in particular is the foundry visit I made with her in 2000. The bucolic landscape outside Beacon, New York, provided a striking contrast with the ragged, mute presences of her human shells scattered over the ground. She said to me, â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is a reality, not a decoration.â&#x20AC;? I can think of no better way to sum up her work.

95 FIGURES POLICH ART WORKS ROCK TAVERN, NEW YORK

JOSEPH ANTENUCCI BECHERER Chief Curator and Vice President Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Grand Rapids, Michigan

70. The artist’s birthplace, Falenty, Poland

Spaces and Places My relationship with Magdalena Abakanowicz began within in the confines of the curatorial. I was interested in objects, but she was insistent on spaces. In fact, “spaces to experience” became her mantra in discussions with me. She was adamant that in order for us to truly work together in a meaningful way, I needed to see and to experience, Katarsis in the Gori Collection outside Florence, Italy. I arrived with my young family to this wondrous outdoor collection in the hills of Tuscany. It was morning: clear, cool, quiet. My sons ran freely. When we encountered the thirty-three-piece ensemble of monumental bronze figures, we entered a kind of forest. Individually, each sculpture was impressive, but the collective resonated deeply within us. As time dissolved into midday, it was the entirety of the site in earth and sky, objects and air that conjoined as an extremely powerful place, leaving a deep and abiding impression. Even the little boys were becalmed, captivated. Later, when I was in Magdalena’s Warsaw studio, I tried to describe my experience with Katarsis, but failed. I was neither able to, nor have I ever been able, to fully articulate the depth of the experience to her. It reverberates within me nearly twenty years later. The enigmatic has become a kind of private island in the sea of memories shared. To be inarticulate was to be honest before her; our relationship developed well beyond the curatorial, and the roles of artist and art historian have long since evaporated like the morning mists across the Tuscan countryside. There have been many trips to Warsaw since then. Many projects have been born, expanded, discerned—a few even decided against. On one extraordinary visit, we finished our day’s interview about her early life, and we left her home and studio in her car. Knowing the direct route back to my hotel, I was surprised at a series of left turns she made rather than to the right. We drove for nearly an hour as the jarring traffic of the city eventually gave way to bumpy, pastoral roads and grassy expanses. She pulled off the main road, headed past a series of official government signs and through several fence gates. An enormous white and turreted, manorial structure slowly came into view. The approach was cinematic. She parked the

car at the side of the road. “This was our house,” she said straightforwardly. It was the weekend, so the site was devoid of people and activity, but pregnant with memory and emotion. We slowly walked the entire perimeter. The silence was only interrupted by the sound of thick, dry grasses or shards of glass breaking beneath our feet and a few simple declarations. “This was my room,” she said with a quick gesture; later, with the nod of her head, she indicated the study where “we met with father.” Following her example, the drive back to the center of Warsaw was silent. As we approached the hotel I could not contain myself any longer, I thanked her for taking me to see the home she had long since lost, but I needed to know why she took me. Her response was succinct, asking me to reflect on the focus of our interview earlier in the day: her early life. More than verbal recollections, that house, those grounds were, in fact, “spaces to be experienced,” too. I remember stepping out of the car, but I don’t recall that either of us said goodbye or good night. The evening sky was purple with streaks of amber, and she drove off without looking back.

71. Skulls (2003), Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Grand Rapids, Michigan (detail)

FIGURE ON A TRUNK FREDERIK MEIJER GARDENS & SCULPTURE PARK GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

72. Figure on a Trunk, 1998 bronze 96 x 103 x 24 inches 243.8 x 261.6 x 61 cm 86

JACK LENOR LARSEN Founder LongHouse Reserve Textile designer, author, and collector East Hampton, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz stood at the pinnacle of those international tapestry weavers creating the Art Fabric Movement. She has since developed unique expressions of dimensional sculpture in several media for an international audience. Strong they are! Durable is her appeal. Unfortunately, too, few of her works are in our public spaces. Those shown in the LongHouse sculpture garden were the most admired of the hundred works exhibited here. In the seventies she engaged me to write her book for Skira. Fortunately and personally, she and I have remained friends for fifty years.

73. Rabdomante (Black Standing Figure), 1999 cast aluminum 66 1/2 x 25 x 34 inches 168.9 x 63.5 x 86.4 cm 88

RABDOMANTE LONGHOUSE RESERVE EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK

MILADA SLIZINSKA Former International Exhibitions Curator Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle Warsaw, Poland

I have known Magdalena Abakanowicz for years, but worked with her just once on an exhibition in 2008. For me, this exhibition had a particular character, because I was then curating international programs at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, and Magdalena Abakanowicz is a Polish artist. I found it to be a very important experience, and the exhibition that resulted was exceptional and very beautiful. The artist called it Cistern because it was created in a water storage receptacle next to the Centre’s home in Ujazdowski Castle. This receptacle, built at the end of the nineteenth century, was hidden underground and forgotten for many years until rediscovered in 2000. Three years later it was restored and since then, it has constituted additional exhibition space. What makes the Cistern distinct is its raw, cylindrical space and the aggressive red brick walls on which remains visible a whitish residue left by water. Sparse light breaks in through five apertures in the vault that once served for buckets to draw out the water. The interior light changes according to the weather; it is different on a sunny summer day, different when overcast. All this makes the Cistern a fascinating space, yet at the same time problematic for artists. There had been a chain of successes for Abakanowicz in 2008. In the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid she showed her newest work, King Arthur’s Court; in the Institut Valencià d’Art in Valencia she had a big retrospective exhibition; and in front of the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf about one hundred of her sculptures were installed. However, despite all that, she was rather forgotten in Poland, and her exhibitions abroad had no resonance in the Polish media. The exhibition in the Cistern was quite different. Initially Abakanowicz wanted to fill the entire space with some material; then she thought of introducing a crowd of figures there. Finally, she placed only two objects inside: two big, empty, headless plaster forms used for casting male figures, put along a single axis, facing each other.

She said: I had to respect the aura of the Cistern and associations that it brings. I didn’t like to compete with the walls. I followed their trace, tried to complete the story related to them. That’s why I didn’t give it another title, and only repeated the name of the structure. It’s not any longer about the figure or the crowd. A shell that contains in it a print of a man. I was never showing it; it was meant to be an intermediary stage, a way of getting to the figure, made of burlap. For Cistern, the path became the result. A harrowing installation and a tale about absence was created.

74. Cistern (2008)

CISTERN CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART UJAZDOWSKI CASTLE WARSAW, POLAND

75. Cistern, 2008 Site-specific project 92

JUAN MANUEL BONET Director L’Instituto Cervantes de Paris Paris, France

One of the Greats Am I anything beyond the sum of my experiences? -Magdalena Abakanowicz

Since her years as a student in Gdansk and Warsaw, seven decades have passed. In the 1960s Magdalena Abakanowicz celebrated her first solo exhibition at the Galeria Kordegarda in Warsaw, Poland, a country that was without a doubt the most afflicted from the second world war. At that time, Poland was slowly coming out of a period of Stalinist glaciation and, in the arts, from Socialist Realism. Abakanowicz would soon distinguish herself as an eager creator of liberty, while irremissibly tied to the traumatic story of her country, which in the twentieth century is symbolized by Auschwitz and later, to make matters worse, Katyn. There was only one precedent in her family in the domain of creation: the great composer Karol Szymanowski, a cousin of her father’s whom she never met. Abaknowicz would soon become world renowned for her amazing textile pieces in a large and abstract format, works that are both solemn and totemic. Anka Ptaszkowska called them Abakany after the artist, and in English we call them Abakans. Another person who was a great support to the artist was the memorable Ryszard Stanisławski, who in 1974 exhibited this work at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and would do so again twenty years later. In Spain, one of the first to talk about her was Daniel Giralt-Miracle, one of our art critics most attuned to the world of tapestry.

Far from finding complaisance in the repetition of the Abakan, Abakanowicz parted from her roots as a textile artist in order to pursue sculpture. Since around 1972, her work has been that of tormented and radical figuration. Giacometti has been one of her beacons. One must also think of Marino Marini, Germaine Richier, and if we enter the domain of painting, Francis Bacon and Zoran Mušič. When looking to the past of the modern aesthetic, her method of representing the human figure often reminds me of Matisse as a sculptor, and in particular, the four feminine nudes that are exhibited in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These works by Matisse bring to mind Abakanowicz’s Androgyne III (1985), housed in the same city in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I speak of the great ones, and she herself is one of them. In her country one would have to draw a certain parallel with the multifaceted Tadeusz Kantor, a painter, playwright, and director who is as guided by history as Abakanowicz, and as capable of achieving a sense of universality. Parting from what she calls “the sum of [her] experiences,” Abakanowicz relays the universal code of the human condition. But neither the sculptor nor the Kantor of Dead Class are isolated cases. We know that she is very interested in this Kantorian universe. From the theatrical perspective, Abakanowicz has also referenced Jerzy Grotowski. Among many others, the people from that corner of the “dark homeland” or the “tenebrous country” that she is in dialogue with are Bruno Schulz, a victim of the Holocaust; Alina Szapocznikow, a Holocaust survivor and pioneer of contemporary sculpture; and recently Miroslaw Balka, whose imagination is also somber. These are figures that coexist in a contradictory and complex scene where one also finds followers of geometry and order: the Unists Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro, and Henryk Staźewski or, in the postwar period, Roman Opałka. It is well known that Bruno Schulz was a great admirer of the dark Goya. I am sure that Abakanowicz is as well: a witness, as was the author of The Cinnamon Shops, of The Disasters of War and of the fact that—to continue with Goya—“the sleep of reason produces monsters.” In 1996, Antonio Saura selected Abakanowicz as the only three-dimensional artist in his fantastic group show in Zaragoza, Despues de Goya: Una mirada subjetiva, in which he brought together those artists who he believed to be of the same caliber as his esteemed Goya. This was a group exhibition comprised of works that—as he told to Fernando Samaniego from El País—“Goya would have liked.” He considered Abakanowicz, whose works were exhibited in three rooms of the Palacio Montemuzo to be “dramatic and a testimony of our time.”

76. Androgyne III (1985), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

I have only had a few fleeting encounters with the artist in Madrid at the end of the 1990s. I remember one particular intensely Polish gathering and dinner (beginning very early) at my home. If I was amazed by her work before, from that moment onward I was also amazed by her personality, her obsession with her work, her character, and her tenacity. Her writings illuminate her creative process and allow us to 95

understand it from its theoretical foundation. At that time, in 1999, I was the Director of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). Through Pierre Levai, I was able to present one of Abakanowicz’s series of acephalous figures in the main hall of the museum. That emblematic work, which belonged to the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, is in reality thirty-six bronze figures possessed by a terrible presence, as all of her works from that cycle are. It has a presence similar to the work acquired just two years prior by the Reina Sofía, also comprised of a number of figures, in this case thirty, made of a mixture of resin and burlap—a material that makes Spaniards of my generations think about Manolo Millares. Death, grey ash, collective drama, and silence: living Polish memory. At the same time, to the eye, the works evoke other coeval mass deaths, from Guernica to Hiroshima, which have had an impact in the domain of fine arts. In Asia, the Crowds of this Polish artist evoke other representations of death that have lasted over twenty centuries, such as the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Xi’an. We must not forget the excavation work that Jasia Reichart references in relation to the work of Abakanowicz.

77. The artist installing La Corte del rey Arturo (2005-07), Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2008

The main hall of the IVAM, which five years prior had hosted a to-scale reconstruction of the Neoplastic room designed by Władysław Strzemiński for the museum in Łódź, would become the gathering place for an agora of bronze figures. With this 2008 retrospective, the first in Spain, IVAM canonized Abakanowicz’s work; the 1999 installation in the hall was the modest aperitif of this big event. Parallel to this exhibition, the Palacio de Cristal of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía exhibited her La Corte del rey Arturo in Madrid. Thirty years before those exhibitions at the IVAM and the Crystal Palace in Madrid, in 1978, another exhibition took place in Madrid’s Palacio Velazquez of El Retiro: Escultura polaca contemporanea. This was the first occasion in which the works of Abakanowicz were shown in the Spanish capital. They were exhibited along with Władysław Hasior, Alina Szapoczikow, and other artists from her generation. Thanks to the on-line ABC Library, today we are able to access an overview of the show published by its critic Antonio Manuel Campoy in the daily newspaper ABC in 1979. I did not see the exhibition, which also traveled to Barcelona, Bilbao, and Lisbon, but I am familiar with its modest catalogue. I can now imagine the

opening of that exhibition from the enthusiastic words of the critic that defined the artist’s contribution: “Magdalena Abakanowicz knits her dramatic forest-labyrinth from the foundation of textile materials; fossilized figures that are half mannequin, half fantastical votive offering.” Mannequins and votive offerings, yes, very well put by a critic that in 1984 would write again about Abakanowicz’s work in a second group show, Tapices polacos contemporaneos inaugurated at the end of the 1983 in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. Campoy chose Abakanowicz’s amazing Black Garments (1969) among the three illustrations that accompanied his article. Mannequins, votive offerings, black suits: a tenebrous territory that was then barely familiar to Spaniards. Today they are well acquainted with the art of those European countries that were then on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Juan Manuel Bonet is former director of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencià, Spain, and of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.

78. From left: Black Environment (1970-78), The Cage (2004-07), Abakan Orange (1971) and various figures, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencià, Spain, 2008 97

LA CORTE DEL REY ARTURO MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA MADRID, SPAIN

79. La Corte del rey Arturo (2005-07) and Bambini (1998-99) Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2008

FRANCES MORRIS Director of Collection, International Art Tate Modern London, United Kingdom

The process of retrieving Abakanowicz’s Abakans from the ghetto of fiber art has already begun and a number of international exhibitions have examined them within an emphatically fine art context. Comparison with her peers undoubtedly enhances our understanding of her procedures and encourages us to seek out new perspectives and methodologies for understanding this recent history, but it should not in anyway overshadow the uniqueness of Abakanowicz’s achievements or her singular position, something that she nurtures and reinforces. On the contrary, to see Abakanowicz in this broader comparative context arguably draws renewed attention to the transgressive nature of her practice and the true radicalism of her position during the late 1960s. Not only did Abakanowicz lead the attack against moribund distinctions between fine art and craft, but she also pioneered a dialogue between sculpture and architecture that we now speak of routinely as installation art. Works of art exist in many different contexts and time frames: the time of their making and the context of that time, social, political, and cultural, as well as subsequent times and contexts. Some works of art, challenging in their youth, lose the power to move audiences as time passes; others gain critical purchase later on. For those of us who have come to this period retrospectively, as students, and for those of us who have come to know the work of Abakanowicz through reproductions in books, nothing can anticipate or alleviate the sheer physical and emotional charge of a real-life encounter with the Abakans. Whether it is Abakan Red (1969-70), slung from on high like a huge pulsating organ, Abakan Orange (1971), with its coil dripping into a coagulating stain, or the great cycle of Black Coats (1969-74), suggestive both of priestly robes or the executioners’ garb, these are mysterious, moving monuments to human creativity and craft—art at its most moving and profound. From Magdalena Abakanowicz: Space to Experience (Milan: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, 2009)

80. Black Environment (1970-78) and Abakan Orange (1971) Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy, 2009 100

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ANGELA VETTESE Curator and Director Graduate Program in Visual Arts & Fashion Università IUAV di Venezia Facolta di Design e Arti Venice, Italy

The figure of Magdalena Abakanowicz is one that still deserves to be brought into focus with conviction… There can be no doubt that up to now her geographical origins have to some extent obscured her radicalism, her struggle against categories and her ability to anticipate or work in parallel to contemporary linguistic research… If the artist had been able to spend long periods abroad, forging ties with her peers and discussing the media she used with them, she would have derived a two-fold advantage: in the first place she would have convinced herself that her use of ordinary and floppy materials, her experimentation with environmental constructions and her explicit exploration of eroticism and femininity were not solitary researches but approaches fully in line with the cutting-edge artistic tendencies of her time. And a link with those artists would have brought her work into the exhibitions where it ought to have appeared, from Arte Povera Azioni Povere (Amalfi, 1968) to Nine at Leo Castelli (New York, 1969) and When Attitudes Become Form (Bern, 1969). Unfortunately at the time not even such globetrotting critics as Harald Szeemann and Germano Celant had the possibility, or perhaps even the confidence, to go looking for new art on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Out of those places came (or could literally be said to have “escaped”) artists who, like Marina Abramovic or Braco Dimitrijevic, belonged to a younger generation and lived on its more liberal fringe of Yugoslavia. At the time of drawing up a list of artists for an exhibition, critics relied on their own opinions and the advice of the artists themselves, who tended to cluster together in groups of like-minded people… There were precocious and significant aspects of the artist’s work in relation to contemporary international developments, quite apart from her geographical origin: first and foremost the desire to create not just and not so much sculptures, but entire spaces in which the visitor is exposed to a disquieting experience. When she talks of “spaces to experience,” an expression of which she is fond, what she means is with all the senses: spaces with a propensity to create a feeling of fear by means of the huge skulls of giant humanoids, from the past or perhaps the future; where the visitor’s sense of coenaesthesia is undermined by undulating volumes, black

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surfaces that deaden sound and ripple like water; where the sense of balance is placed in doubt by having to pass through a space occupied by what seems to be a heap of balls left on the ground like gigantic potatoes, like larvae or like grains of corn, in a total visual chaos, where even our sense of temperature is affected, because the metal figures make us feel cold while the ones made of hemp warm us up. The work is the exhibition as a whole, an installation in which many media are used but which is intended to create an atmosphere of general unease, of astonishment at life and at the same time of the inextricable difficulty of living. From Magdalena Abakanowicz: Space to Experience (Milan: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, 2009)

81. Two Wings Flyer 2 (2007-08), Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy, 2009

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SPACE TO EXPERIENCE FONDAZIONE ARNALDO POMODORO MILAN, ITALY

82. From left: Head 1 (1998-1999), Head 2 (1998-1999), Head 3 (1998-1999) Abakan Red (1969), Black Environment (1970-78), Abakan Orange (1971), and Bambini (1998-99) Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy, 2009 104

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83. The artist at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1992

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MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ 1930 Born in Falenty, Poland 1950-54 Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland 1954-60 Painted a series of large gouaches on paper and canvas 1960s Created monumental threedimensional 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 nonfigurative 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 Abakanowicz on the Roof is installed 1999 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 The Fischer Collection) Five Running, bronze, is installed 2005 at Sculpture Garden of Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona Agora, a large permanent monument 2006 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 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel figures, 2010 Warsaw, Poland The artist lives in Warsaw, Poland. S E L E C T E D AWA R D S + R E CO G N I T I O N

1965 1993 1997 2000

2004 2005 2010

Grand Prix of São Paolo Biennale, São Paolo, Brazil Award for Distinction in Sculpture, Sculpture Center, New York, New York Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts, World Cultural Council, Mexico City, Mexico 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 Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, France Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, New Jersey Das Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Berlin, Germany

S E L E C T E D S O LO E X H I B I T I O N S

1960 1962 1965 1967

1968

Wystawa prac Magdaleny Abakanowicz—Kosmowskiej, Galeria Kordegarda, Warsaw, Poland Tapisseries, Magdalena Abakanowicz Pologne, Galerie Dautzenberg, Paris, France Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz, Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway; traveled to Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, Bergen, Norway; Stavanger Kunstforening, Stavanger, Norway; and Kunstforening, Trondheim, Norway 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

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Kunsthalle, Mannheim, Germany 1970 National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden The Fabric Forms of Magdalena 1971 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 Rope Structures, Arnolfini Gallery, 1973 Bristol, England 1974 Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland Abakanowicz: Organic Structures 1975 and Human Forms, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland 1976 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; traveled to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Organic Structures, Malmö Konsthall, 1977 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 1969

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1986 1988 1989 1990 1991

1992 1993

1994 1995

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Abakanowicz: About Men, Sculpture 1974-1985, Xavier Fourcade Inc., New York, New York Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia Mücsarnok-Kunstalle Budapest, Budapest, Hungary Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri Städelschen Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent Work, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Sculpturen, Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, Germany Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Marlborough Fine Art, London, England 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, Łódź, Poland Marlborough Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 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 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 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 Els Jardins de Can Altamira, Barcelona, Spain Center of Polish Sculpture, Oronsko, Poland

1996

1997 1998

1999 2000

2001

2002

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield, England 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 Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, France (through 1998) Magdalena Abakanowicz: Mutants, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida Starmach Gallery, Kraków, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent Works, Sculpture, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland 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 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 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 Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań, Poland

2003 2003

2004

2005

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 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) 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

2007 2008

2009 2010 2011 2012

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 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Coexistence: Dream, Gruby and Kozio, Taguchi Fine Art, Ltd. Tokyo, Japan Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculptures et Dessins, Galerie Patrice Trigano, Paris, France 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 Valencià d’Art Modern, Centro Julio Gonzalez, Valencià, Spain Magdalena Abakanowicz: Hurma, 1994-1995, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, Florida (through 2009) Magdalena Abakanowicz: Space to Experience, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy Magdalena Abakanowicz, Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany 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 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Life and Work, Olomouc Museum of Art, Olomouc, Czech Republic Magdalena Abakanowicz: Walking Figures, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, New York, New York Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Human Adventure, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey (through 2013)

2013 2014

2015

Abakanowicz? Abakanowicz!, The House of the Visual Artist, Warsaw, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: A Survey 1987-2009, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Magdalena Abakanowicz: Retrospective, Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej, Orońsko, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: Opus et Fabulas, Miejsca Galeria Sztuki, Lodz, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: New York Avenue Sculpture Project, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (through September 27, 2015) Magdalena Abakanowicz, Galeria Winda, Kielce, Poland Magdalena Abakanowicz: In Honour of Her 85th Birthday, Beck & Eggling, Düsseldorf, Germany Unrepeatability: Abakan to Crowd, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Crowd and Individual, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

PERMANENT OUTDOOR INSTALLATIONS

1965 1985

1987 1988 1990 1991

1992

1993

Standing Shape, steel, Elblag City, Poland. Created 1965. Katarsis, 33 figures, bronze, Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy. Created 1985. Negev, 7 discs, limestone, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel. Created 1987. Space of Dragon, 10 metaphoric animal heads, bronze, Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea. Created 1985. Neun Figuren Raum, bronze, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany. Created 1990. Sagacious Heads, 4 sculptures from the cycle, bronze, John Kluge Collection, Charlottesville, Virginia. Created 1989. 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. 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, NelsonAtkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Created 1994, 1998-1999. Caminando, 20 walking figures, bronze, private collection of Napa Valley, California. Created 1998. Figura Prima, from the cycle Handlike 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, Handlike Trees, bronze, Biarritz, France. Created 1995. Manus Ultimus, from the cycle Handlike 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 HandLike Trees, bronze, Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany. Created 1995.

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Figure on a Trunk, bronze, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Created 2000. Figure on Beaem 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 20012002. 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 20012002. 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, Poland 2010 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel figures, Warsaw, Poland

P U B L I C CO L L E C T I O N S

Australian National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, South Korea Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford, California Caracas Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela

Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland

Chicago Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois

Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea

National Museum of Modern Art, Pusan, South Korea Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa

Phoenix Art Museum Sculpture Garden, Phoenix, Arizona

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Provinciehuis Noord-Brabant, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands

Fondazione Pomodoro, Milan, Italy

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

Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey

Hakone Open Air Museum, The Fuji Hakone Izu National Park, Hakone, Japan

Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway Hess 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, Israel

Jardin 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

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon

Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Seoul Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan

Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York Tate Modern, London, England

Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, Ohio

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, D.C.

Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany

Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany

Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Woman’s Club of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, México City, México Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, Florida Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan

Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland

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Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland

William H. Van Every Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina

Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia

84. Infantes (1992), burlap and resin, thirty-three figures, each 55 1/8 x 11 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches, 140 x 29.2 x 29.9 cm View of Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculpture at Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1993 P H OTO G R A P H I C C R E D I TS

1. Photo: Star Black 2. Courtesy: Mary Jane Jacob 3-7. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 8-10. Courtesy: Mary Jane Jacob 11-12. Courtesy: Mary Jane Jacob 13. Photo: Jan Nordhal. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 14-18. Photo: Matthew Grubb 19. Photo: Bill Orcutt 20-32. Photo: Matthew Grubb 33. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 34. Photo: Jan Kosmoswki. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 35-36. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 37. Photo: Artur Starewicz. Courtesy: Giuliano Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy 38. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 39. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 40. Photo: Artur Starewicz. Courtesy: Giuliano Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy 41-42. Photo: Carlo Fei. Courtesy: Giuliano Gori Collection, Pistoia, Italy 43. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 44. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 45-46. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 47-48. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 49-52. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 53. Photo: Bill Orcutt. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 54-55. Photo: Artur Starewicz. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 56. © Magdalena Abakanowicz

57. Photo: John Wronn. Installation view of Magdalena Abakanowicz at MoMA (June 19–August 12, 2015). Courtesy: Museum of Modern Art 58. Courtesy: The Hess Collection 59-62. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson © Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York 63. Photo: Lee Stalsworth. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution Museum Purchase, 1992 64. Photo: Tom Jenkins. Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas 65. Courtesy: Mary Jane Jacob 66. Photo: Jonty Wilde. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 67-68. Photo: Gintaras Karosas. Courtesy: Gintaras Karosas, Europas Parkas, Lithuania 69. Photo: Nicholas Walster. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 70. Photo: Artur Starewicz. From Fate and Art (Skira, 2007). Edited by Paola Gribaudo 71. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 72. Photo: Kevin Beswick. Courtesy and copyright: Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park 73. Photo: Joanne Sohn. Courtesy: LongHouse Reserve. 74-75. Photo: Mariusz Michalski. Courtesy: CCA Ujazdowski Castle and Magdalena Abakanowicz 76. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, New York 77. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 78. Courtesy: Mary Jane Jacob 79. © Magdalena Abakanowicz 80-82. Photo: Dario Tettamanzi. Courtesy: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro 83. Courtesy: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 84. © Magdalena Abakanowicz

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N E W YO R K /

MADRID /

MARLBOROUGH GALLERY, INC. 40 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019 Telephone 212.541.4900 Fax 212.541.4948 www.marlboroughgallery.com mny@marlboroughgallery.com

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MARLBOROUGH GRAPHICS 40 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019 Telephone 212.541.4900 Fax 212.541.4948 graphics@marlboroughgallery.com MARLBOROUGH CHELSEA 545 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001 Telephone 212.463.8634 Fax 212.463.9658 www.marlboroughchelsea.com info@marlboroughchelsea.com MARLBOROUGH BROOME STREET 331 Broome Street New York, NY 10002 Telephone 212.219.8926 broomestreet@marlboroughchelsea.com

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MARLBOROUGH FINE ART LTD. 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY Telephone 44.20.7629.5161 Fax 44.20.7629.6338 www.marlboroughfineart.com mfa@marlboroughfineart.com MARLBOROUGH GRAPHICS 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY Telephone 44.20.7629.5161 Fax 44.20.7495.0641 graphics@marlboroughfineart.com

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Important Works available by: Impressionists and Post-Impressionists; Twentieth-Century European Masters; German Expressionists; Post-War American Artists

Marlborough Gallery would like to extend a very special thanks to Paola Gribaudo and Skira, for generously providing many important images to this publication.

E D I TO R S / DESIGN /

MARLBOROUGH CONTEMPORARY 6 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BY Telephone 44.20.7629.5161 info@marlboroughcontemporary.com www.marlboroughcontemporary.com

Mary Jane Jacob and Tara K. Reddi

Sydney Smith

PRODUCTION /

Beatrice Thornton, Zoe Milgram, Devon Johnson

Angela Suh (Park), Sebastian Sarmiento (Bonet), Klementyna Suchanow with Alan Lockwood (Slizinka) T R A N S L AT I O N /

E D I T I O N O F 1 2 0 0 P R I N T E D I N N E W YO R K B Y P R O J E C T

C O V E R , B A C KC O V E R /

Heads, 1973-75 burlap and hemp rope fourteen pieces, each ranging from 33 x 20 x 25 7/8 to 42 7/8 x 29 7/8 x 28 inches 84 x 51 x 66 - 109 x 76 x 71 cm

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