M AG DA L E N A A BA K A N OW I C Z E M B O D I E D
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M AG DA L E N A A BA K A N OW I C Z E M B O D I E D
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M AG DA L E NA A BA K A N OW I C Z 1930-2017
Revolutionary Difference, on the Art of Magdalena Abakanowicz by Kelly Taxter
Imagination is stronger than reality, or rather, replaces it. -Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1992 Art history is marked and propelled by artists who interrogate and radically alter the status quo. Throughout the 20 th century in North America and Western Europe, many of those ruptures and shifts addressed how art is made and perceived, circulated and contextualized. Beyond the Euro-American West, the compartmentalization, or merely discursive intermingling of art and life was inconceivable to artists living under social and political conditions such as war, revolution, communism, and totalitarian regimes. Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), an artist who was based in and around Warsaw throughout her life, came of age during World War II. She was from a wealthy, landowning family forced to flee their country estate with coins sewn into their clothing, relocate to Warsaw, and live anonymously while the city was systematically destroyed. She first emerged as an artist in the 1960s, from behind the Iron Curtain, and grew to international prominence throughout the politically tumultuous 1980s. Readings of her work are inseparable from the traumas of her childhood, 1 and are also shaped by the cultural impact of Soviet Communism, its dissolution, and the subsequent expansion of the art world after 1989. 2 Abakanowicz’s ingenuity is not solely attributable to those events. 3 Her relentless curiosity about the natural world, the human body, and psychology yielded conceptual frameworks and formal innovations that echo and parallel the breakthroughs of Jackson Pollock, as well as contemporaries such as Eva Hesse, Joseph Beuys, and Robert Morris. Importantly, many of Abakanowicz’s works are sited outdoors; she was acutely aware of and expert at manipulating space, as well as deeply interested in the meeting between people and her objects. Mary Jane Jacob, one of the artist’s early and longstanding champions, is known for her commitment to public art, as well as exhibitions staged outside of traditional museum spaces and inclusive of marginalized artists, audiences, and venues. It is particularly salient now, when recent political and social upheavals have again highlighted the necessity for an authentic public sphere, to reconsider the public-ness of Abakanowicz’s work, and the ways in which artists might inspire social change.
1 The artist’s biography—the connection between her experiences of war and revolution and her aesthetic—has been extensively written about. While that history undeniably impacted her art, this essay examines her achievements through an expanded historical lens. The work of female artists is often and inordinately dense with biography, as if to imply that events which unfolded outside of an artist’s world had little to no bearing on her work, or that her work did not influence artists outside of her immediate sphere. My examination is purposefully feminist in its aim to move beyond biography and thicken the existing scholarship. 2 The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 and the U.S.S.R. officially dissolved on December 25, 1991. 3 Recent exhibitions have challenged the marginalization of artists living and working outside of the West, for example: Documenta 14, Athens/Kassel (2017); Unorthodox, The Jewish Museum; and Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1960-1980, Museum of Modern Art (both 2015).
Abakanowicz’s initial impact occurred in the 1960s, with presentations of large-scale fiber sculptures collectively titled Abakans (1960-86). These were made primarily of sisal, which was always in short supply and eventually stopped coming into the country. She turned to discarded industrial shipping ropes, massive in width and length, which she laboriously unraveled and hand-dyed. She fashioned their strings into three-dimensional objects of irregular patterns, shapes, and sizes. The Abakans were installed in large groups to create a sense of monumentality and penetrability; these were both stand-alone sculptures and players within an experiential field. Alongside artists like Sheila Hicks and Claire Zeisler, she was a main protagonist in the emergent studio fiber movement, which encompassed debates around feminism, the hierarchical division between fine art and craft, and the dialectic between insider and so-called outsider artists. 4 While the feminist movement embraced the use and transformation of fiber as a way to reclaim and value women’s work and craft, Abakanowicz was never a self-identified feminist. Material and space were dually urgent artistic concerns; she understood and pursued each as boundless potentialities to capture and command. Rope Penetrations, Situation in Space was the title of Abakanowicz’s first American solo exhibition, held at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1971. The Abakans were the show’s focus, but when several did not arrive she was forced to make do; an enormous rope was sourced from the Los Angeles harbor, an iron bed scavenged from the local dump. The bulk of the rope was coiled onto the bed. She pulled one end up, out, across, and around the space, knotted it up at points, released it again, until it finally terminated above an orange Abakan positioned on the floor. She teased out a single thread that hung down to meet and enter the floor-bound object, disappearing into its slit. The bodily, sexual implications of her materials and installation were as legible as the artist’s clear control of material and space. The installation was an all-encompassing, psychophysical experience that echoed Eva Hesse’s innovatively sensual rope sculptures and Robert Morris’s slyly masculine felt pieces. The rope reappeared in Abakanowicz’s exhibition for the Edinburgh International Festival in 1972. She “threaded” it between two buildings, pulling it outside of the gallery and onto the roof of an adjacent cathedral, where it cascaded down into a surrounding garden. In her memoir Fate and Art: Monologue, she describes this gesture as a “penetration of the city of Edinburgh.” 5 These exhibitions exemplify Abakanowicz’s spatial mastery, and her ability to juggle divergent tones and discordant concerns: between hard and soft, masculine and feminine, psychological and physical, deeply personal and universal. Extending the reach of her exhibition beyond its walls and out into a non-art venue is notable. Her work would continue to grow in number and scale as she increasingly focused on outdoor and public spaces. Abakanowicz represented Poland in the 1980 Venice Biennale, a career turning point both for its global reach and as an opportunity to evolve her investigations. 6 She exhibited a cross section of fiber-based works that, like the Abakans, are abstracted from and evocative of the human body. Her sweeping, space-consuming gestures with ropes shifted towards the making of huge quantities of objects, notably Embryology (1978-81), a series of approximately 800
4 Recent survey exhibitions have evidenced a renewed interest in fiber artists as well as debates around outsider art, including; Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2018); two Venice Biennales: The Encyclopedic Palace (2013) and Viva arte Viva (2017); Fibers: Sculpture 1960-Present, ICA Boston (2015); and Burning Down the House, the 10th Gwanju Biennial, Gwanju, Korea (2014). 5 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Fate and Art: Monologue (Milan: Skira, 2008), 59. 6 As a result of this presentation Suzanne Pagé, then the chief curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, initiated a solo exhibition at that institution (1982). Mary Jane Jacob had begun to work on a retrospective in 1979 for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1982), which traveled to venues in the U.S. and Canada. Simultaneous to Abakanowicz’s wider circulation, martial law gripped Poland from December 1981 to July 1983, adding yet another layer of stress and uncertainty to the artist’s ability to practice and exhibit.
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burlap-covered, fiber-stuffed oblong and ovoid shapes. Their lumpy, rough-hewn construction evokes body parts in various states of solidity and decomposition, as well as cocoons, boulders, rocks, and military sandbags. Embryology was arranged and strewn across the gallery in heaps and strands, creating a field around and through which the viewer traversed. Abakanowicz had recently begun studying the sciences, in partnership with experts in the fields of biology and neurology. She also traveled to Papua New Guinea, where the overwhelming power of the natural environment had a profound and lasting influence. Her research revealed that the human brain thrives while negotiating ever-shifting, conflicting centers of power, and interdependent life and death processes sustain the vitality of the natural world. Her attraction to these tensions, like those communicated by her indeterminate forms, suggests a deep curiosity about conflict. Her work feels centered on a search for its generative, rather than destructive, power. In 1988 Abakanowicz exhibited two definitive bodies of work at Mücsarnok, Budapest, War Games and her first Crowd. Walking near the Mazury Lake in 1987, she came across a field of felled trees left behind by loggers. The branches had been sawed off and their butchered trunks appeared amputated. The hulking, vulnerable forms recalled the human body, their arbitrary waste the destructions of war. The trunks appeared defenseless, with scarred exteriors and twisted interiors. Abakanowicz determined to repurpose them as sculptural objects, which would address resiliency and fragility, regeneration and wreckage, nature and machine. She worked with an axe and chainsaw. Pieces of sheet metal capped the stumps in flat, conical, and sword-like shapes. Some parts were “bandaged” with burlap. Low slung, makeshift bases, as well as differently scaled wooden barrels balanced the monumental, horizontally oriented objects. When exhibited en masse they created a field: of weapons, victims, or even defiant survivors. Abakanowicz again keeps contradictory readings at play, perhaps puzzling through the capacity for war to engender both freedom and loss. The series would be presented in 1993 at MoMA PS1, New York. In his catalog essay, curator Michael Brenson notes the rarity and unusual power of horizontal sculpture, an observation that warrants further discussion. If the vertical, i.e. phallic, masculine plane belongs to and speaks of male strength, then the horizontal belongs to women. Across a flat plane many moves are possible and often necessary; women must often move through, across, and sideways to enact and achieve power. Abakanowicz manifests a latent feminism; recall the soft forms, folds, and slits of the Abakans, her indefatigable commitment to the search and manipulation of materials, and her aesthetic “toughness.” Moreover, the horizontal connects to the natural world, the arena from which War Games evolved and where Abakanowicz was always immersed. Rosalind Krauss, while discussing the many significances of Jackson Pollock’s shift from the easel to the floor, adds that the horizontal is the site of instinct and the unconscious, where “the vision of animals is focused,” and across which, ”they and their prey both travel.” 7 Lastly, the horizontal might also be the space of exiles and refugees, states of being that Abakanowicz negotiated throughout her life and now grip so many across the world. Postcolonial scholar Edward Said writes, “borders and
7 Rosalind E. Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois, Formless, A User’s Guide (Cambridge: The MIT Press,1997), 90.
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barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience.” 8 The War Games were made in near simultaneity with Eastern Europe’s break with the Soviet Union; the works feel influenced by and entangled with that watershed moment, while also harbingers of events to come. The end of Soviet Communism fueled the next thirty years of globalization, which has not only increased the mobility and interconnectivity of people and capital, but also trapped countless, nation-less, people in perpetual motion. Globalization’s many side effects include the dissolution of cultural specificities, a ravaged environment, and a planet entrenched in perpetual war. Abakanowicz imagined an ecology wherein the conflicts between man and the environment might create a state of balance, as it does in the natural world. Brenson saw that hope in the War Games, writing that they describe the “bottomless cruelty and destructiveness” of human beings, while they are also “hymns to [our] equally unlimited capacity for enchantment and renewal.” 9 Crowds accompanied the first presentation of War Games. These were fifty, headless, standing burlap figures. They stood in rows, facing giant wheels evocative of cannons. Abakanowicz arranged the gallery space as a battlefield, pitting man against machine. At this point, she had ceased making singular objects; instead, each series comprised many individual units. At the time of her death, she had made countless human-like figurative sculptures, both seated and standing, sometimes with animal heads. These series have been installed across the world, in conventional exhibitions and commissioned as public art. She explained her impulse towards proliferation as, “building a field of my radiance,” 10 an almost magical description. Elsewhere, she explicitly links it to the experience of war: It has taken me years to create this barrier of my crowds between me and man, any man that I was frightened of. Man whose history consists of senseless killing and destruction, without concept and any objective, without rational order. Behind the barrier of all these created figures I feel secure. 11 Abakanowicz was driven to create experiences; space and object were inseparable considerations in all of her installations. Her opportunities to exhibit in public space, freed from the contextually delimiting gallery, added more and unpredictable dimensions. In a recent essay about her interest in the public sphere, Mary Jane Jacob makes a distinction between an “art experience” and a “museum experience.” 12 She explains her efforts to privilege and propagate art experiences for any type of person who, “could be engaged or ensnared,” because she believes, “that anyone could have an art experience.” If the imaginative space of art allows for provisional, fantastic, utopic, and meditative realities, then offering those potentialities in the public realm increases art’s humanist capacities. Abakanowicz witnessed this effect when the city of Hiroshima commissioned her to make a sculpture. On the grounds of the Hiroshima City Museum of
8 Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture, ed. Russell Ferguson et al (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 365. 9 Michael Brenson, Magdalena Abakanowicz, War Games (New York: The Institute of Contemporary Art PS1 Museum, 1993), 11. 10 Abakanowicz, Fate and Art: Monologue, 115. 11 Abakanowicz, Fate and Art: Monologue, 73. 12 Mary Jane Jacob, “Art in Public Space, on Practicing in Public,” The Exhibitionist, no. 2 (June 2010): 125.
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Contemporary Art she permanently installed forty seated “backs,” collectively titled Space of Becalmed Beings (1993). The survivors and ancestors of the atomic bomb experienced a very different wartime reality than Abakanowicz; nonetheless, her artwork spoke to and with that distinct community, a testament to her sensitivities towards human conflict and renewal, as well as her innate understanding that art connects and speaks across borders. Each of these series were made and exhibited while the art world in the United States was in the throes of identity politics. 13 The works of activists and artists were merging, including those of feminists, the queer community, and people of color. These historically marginalized groups were voicing their issues and needs in an expanded sphere, leveraging the platforms provided by art and artists; in turn, artists were considering the potential of their works to include and activate political and social discussions. Simultaneously, cultural theorists like Nancy Fraser were breaking down and redefining the very meaning of the word “public.” In a still-powerful essay titled “Rethinking the Public Sphere, A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” she points out its dangerously hierarchical construction and the many “publics” it represses or forces out. She focuses on the feminist project of bringing abuses against women, so often regulated to the domestic or private sphere, out in the open as a means to shift the perception, definition, and legislation of assault. 14 A quarter century later, the voices of all of these communities have evolved and loudly reemerged; once again artists and activists are reunited in the campaign for cultural change. Many of Abakanowicz’s works made between the mid-1990s and 2010 are publicly sited; they carve out a small space for what Jacob insightfully distinguishes as an “art experience.” Those projects in particular, activate a plane for moving past and across, a means to decrease the ideological gaps between people and publics and increase the capacity for understanding. The work of Magdalena Abakanowicz reveals a multifaceted ability to break through formal, conceptual, and political barriers. Writing about the complexities of and potential for public art, cultural critic David Levi Strauss invoked the late, deeply political and influential East German playwright Heiner Muller who said, “I believe the main political function of art today, though this might sound modest, is to mobilize the imagination.” 15 This is perhaps Abakanowicz’s most revolutionary quality. Regardless of the intensity of her artistic inquiries and the severity of her political situation, she practiced in the realm of the imagination, in daydreams, and had the fanciful idea that art might reside harmoniously alongside life.
Kelly Taxter is an Associate Curator at the Jewish Museum in New York City
13 That moment reached its apex in 1993 (the same year as War Games at MoMA PS1) with the 1993 Biennial Exhibition, held at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from February 24 to June 20,1993. It was curated by Thelma Golden, John G. Hanhardt, Lisa Phillips, and Elisabeth Sussman. The catalog for the exhibition included essays by Homi K. Bhaba, Coco Fusco, B Ruby Rich, and Avital Ronell. 14 Nancy Fraser, ““Rethinking the Public Sphere, A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, No. 25/26 (1990): 56-80. 15 David Levi Strauss, “Coming to the Point at Three Rivers,” in Between Dog and Wolf, Essays on Art and Politics (Brooklyn: Automedia, 1999), 140.
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Abakan Rouge III, 1971 sisal weaving 127 x 78 3/4 in., 322.6 x 200 cm
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Untitled, 1980-1983 sisal weaving (tapestry in five parts) 157 1/2 x 433 1/8 in., 400 x 1100 cm
Lukas in Pyramid, 1991 burlap, resin, and iron 78 3/4 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 in., 200 x 89.8 x 89.8 cm
Figure in Iron House, 1989-1990 burlap, resin, and iron 58 1/4 x 43 3/4 x 35 in., 148 x 111.1 x 88.9 cm
From the series: Coexistence 13, 2002 burlap, unique 85 x 26 x 25 in., 215.9 x 66 x 63.5 cm From the series: Coexistence 3, 2002 burlap, unique 76 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 15 in., 194.3 x 62.2 x 38.1 cm
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From the series: Coexistence 6, 2002 burlap, unique 78 x 26 x 21 in., 198.1 x 66 x 53.3 cm
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From the series: Coexistence 9, 2002 burlap, unique 75 3/4 x 24 x 18 in., 192.4 x 61 x 45.7 cm
War Games “Errant”, 1989-1990 iron, burlap, and wood, unique 47 1/4 x 173 1/4 x 23 5/8 in., 120 x 440.1 x 60 cm
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War Games “Marrow Bone”, 1987 wood and iron, unique 59 x 137 3/4 x 31 1/2 in., 149.9 x 349.9 x 80 cm
Silent Figure, 2002 bronze, unique 71 5/8 x 20 1/2 x 11 3/4 in., 182 x 52 x 30 cm
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Osiel, 2005-2006 bronze, unique 89 x 22 7/8 x 35 3/8 in., 226.1 x 58.1 x 89.8 cm
From the Anatomy Cycle: Anatomy 29, 2009 burlap, wood, and steel, unique 43 x 38 1/2 x 11 in., 109.2 x 97.8 x 27.9 cm From the Anatomy Cycle: Anatomy 19, 2009 burlap, wood, and steel, unique 37 x 9 3/4 x 6 1/2 in., 94 x 24.8 x 16.5 cm
From the Anatomy Cycle: AnatomyTitle, 21, 2009 year burlap, wood, and steel,medium unique 37 x XX 27 1/2 x XX x 10 x XX 1/2 in., in., XX 94 xx69.8 XX xx 26.7 XX cm
Anonymous Portrait #1, 1989-1990 cotton, resin, and wood, unique 25 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 8 3/4 in., 64.8 x 26.7 x 22.2 cm Anonymous Portrait Head #2, 1987 cotton, resin, and sand, unique 25 3/4 x 10 1/4 x 8 in., 65.4 x 26 x 20.3 cm
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Anonymous Portrait Head #3, 1987 cotton, resin, and sand, unique 25 x 10 x 7 7/8 in., 63.5 x 25.4 x 20 cm
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Anonymous Portrait Head #5, 1987 cotton, resin, and sand, unique 25 3/4 x 10 1/4 x 8 in., 65.4 x 26 x 20.3 cm
Crowd IV (24 figures), 1989-1990 burlap and resin, each figure is unique each figure approximately: 68 7/8 x 23 5/8 x 11 3/4 in., 174.9 x 60 x 29.9 cm
On display at Marlborough Gallery (second floor) 545 W 25th Street, New York
Kayser Infant I, 2001 bronze, unique 66 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 12 1/2 in., 168.9 x 21.6 x 31.8 cm Kayser Infant III, 2001 bronze, unique 63 x 12 1/2 x 8 3/4 in., 160 x 31.8 x 22.2 cm
Anonim 2, 2009 bronze, unique 18 3/4 x 8 1/2 x 9 1/2 in., 47.6 x 21.6 x 24.1 cm Anonim 3, 2009 bronze, unique 18 3/4 x 9 1/2 x 10 3/4 in., 47.6 x 24.1 x 27.3 cm
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 that were taken to the stage by Asbestos, a Japanese Butoh dance group 1999 Abakanowicz on the Roof is installed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York 2000 Created Crowd of 95 Figures, bronze figures of adults and children standing and walking 2002 Unrecognized, 112 larger-than-life, cast-iron figures, is permanently installed at Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland (each figure is over 83 inches high) 2003 Inauguration of Space of Stone, 22 granite blocks installed at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey; Open Air Aquarium, 30 stainless steel fish, is permanently installed and situated along the riverfront on Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2004 Big Figures, 20 bronze walking figures, is installed in front of Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey (2001-2002; on loan from a private collector)
2005
Five Running, bronze, is installed at Sculpture Garden of Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona 2006 Agora, a large permanent monument consisting of 106 castiron figures, is installed at Chicago Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois (each about 110 1/4 in. tall) 2009 Created Birds, aluminum, Wroclaw, Poland 2010 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel figures, Warsaw, Poland 2017 Died April 20 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 O LO E X H I B I T I O N S
1960
1962 1965
Wystawa prac Magdaleny Abakanowicz—Kosmowskiej, Galeria Kordegarda, Warsaw, Poland Tapisseries, Magdalena Abakanowicz Pologne, Galerie Dautzenberg, Paris, France Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland
1967
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway; traveled to Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum, Bergen, Norway; Stavanger Kunstforening, Stavanger, Norway; and Kunstforening, Trondheim, Norway 1968 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; traveled to Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands; Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Schiedam Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland 1969 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Kunsthalle, Mannheim, Germany 1970 National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden 1971 The Fabric Forms of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California 1972 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Textile Strukturen und Konstruktionen, Environments, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland 1973 Rope Structures, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England 1974 Muzeum Sztuki, Lodź, Poland 1975 Abakanowicz: Organic Structures 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 1977 Organic Structures, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway 1980 Polish Pavillion, 39° Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy 1982 ARC/ Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
Retrospective Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; traveled to Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada; National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C; De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas; Portland Art Museum and Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon; Visual Arts Center of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska; and Frederick S. Wright Art Gallery of the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California (through 1984) 1983 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada 1985 Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland Abakanowicz: About Men, Sculpture 1974-1985, Xavier Fourcade Inc., New York, New York 1986 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia 1988 Mücsarnok-Kunstalle Budapest, Budapest, Hungary Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri 1989 Städelschen Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany Magdalena Abakanowicz: Recent Work, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 1990 Sculpturen, Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, Germany Marlborough Fine Art, London, England 1991 Retrospective Exhibition, Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan; Art Tower, Mito, Japan; and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland Marlborough Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 1992 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Magdalena Abakanowicz: Arboreal Architecture, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York
1993
1994 1995
1996
1997 1998
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, Galería 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 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
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1999 2000
2001
2002 2003
Abakanowicz on the Roof, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York 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 Dancing Figures, Marlborough Fine Art, London, England Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Long Wait, MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario, Canada Magdalena Abakanowicz: Tanzende und Schreitende, Beck & Eggeling, Düsseldorf, Germany Abakanowicz, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, the Netherlands Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Skulls, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan Coexistence, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York Magdalena Abakanowicz, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy
2004
2005
2006
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 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Sculptures et Dessins, Marlborough Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco Magdalena Abakanowicz, Trondheim Art Museum, Trondheim, Norway Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Drawings, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan
2007
2008
2009 2010 2011 2012
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 València d’Art Modern, Centro Julio Gonzalez, València, 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)
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2013
Abakanowicz? Abakanowicz!, The House of the Visual Artist, Warsaw, Poland 2013 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Opus et Fabulas, Miejsca Galeria Sztuki, Lodz, Poland 2014 Magdalena Abakanowicz: New York Avenue Sculpture Project, National Musuem of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC 2015 Magdalena Abakanowicz: Crowd and Individual, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy Unrpeatability: Abakan to Crowd, Marlborough Gallery, New York Abakany.Abakans, Galeria Starmach, Krakow, Poland 2016 Magdalena Abakanowicz, Marlborough Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (though 2017) 2017 Effigies of Life: A Tribute to Magdalena Abakanowicz (19302017), Wroclaw, Poland Metamorfizm/Metamorphim, Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz, Poland (through 2018) PERMANENT OUTDOOR I N STA L L AT I O N S
1965 1985
1987 1988
1990 1991
1992
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. 1993 Hand-like Trees, 5 sculptures, bronze, Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California. Created 1992. Space of 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 Handlike 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 Handlike 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 19971998. 1998 Fish, bronze, Metropolitano de Lisboa Orient Station, Lisbon, Portugal. Created 1997-1998. 1999 30 Bronze Standing Figures, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Created 1994, 1998-1999. Caminando, 20 walking figures, bronze, private collection of Napa Valley, California. Created 19981999. Figura Prima, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. Created 1995.
Puellae, group of 30 figures, bronze, National Gallery of Art, Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Created 1992. 2000 Figura Rompa, from the cycle, Hand-like Trees, bronze, Biarritz, France. Created 1995. Manus Ultimus, from the cycle Hand-like Trees, bronze, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France. Created 1998-1999. Figure on Trunk, bronze, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Created 19982000. Black Crowd, 20 figures, bronze, Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany. Created 2000. Figura Ultima, from the cycle Hand-Like Trees, bronze, Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany. Created 1995. Figure on a Trunk, bronze, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Created 2000. Figure on Beam with Wheels, bronze, Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, Ohio. Large Figure on Trunk with Wheels and Slim Figure on Trunk with Wheels, bronze, Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy. Created 1998-2000. 2001 Birds of Knowledge of Good and Evil, 6 sculptures, aluminum, Woman’s Club of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Created 2001. Mutants, 6 sculptures, stainless steel, Collection of Artists’ Garden, Warsaw, Poland. Created 20012002. 2001-02 Mutant, stainless steel, Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany. Created 2001. 2002 Unrecognized, 112 cast iron figures, Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland. Created 2001-2002. Hand-Like Trees, 4 sculptures, bronze, Brea Civic Cultural Center, Brea, California. Created 19941995.
36
2003
2004 2005
Open Air Aquarium, 30 stainless steel fish, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Created 2002. Space of Stone, 22 granite stone sculptures, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey. Created 2001-2002. Big Figures, 20 bronze figures, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Created 2001-2004.
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, cast iron figures, Vancouver, Canada Agora, 106 cast iron figures, Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois. Inaugurated November, 2006. 2009 Birds, aluminum, Wroclaw, Poland 2010 Crossroads, 4 stainless steel figures, Warsaw, Poland Seated Figures, 10 cast iron figures, Shanghai Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China, 2010
P U B L I C CO L L E C T I O N S
Australian National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia
Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany
Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan, South Korea
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Stanford, California Caracas Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela
Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz, Poland
Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan
Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
Citadel Park, Poznań, Poland
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C
Chicago Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois
National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
Fondazione Pomodoro, Milan, Italy
National Museum of Modern Art, Pusan, South Korea
Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Giuliano Gori Collection, Spazi d’Arte, Santomato di Pistoia, Pistoia, Italy
Phoenix Art Museum Sculpture Garden, Phoenix, Arizona Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey
Hakone Open Air Museum, The Fuji Hakone Izu National Park, Hakone, Japan
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey
Provinciehuis Noord-Brabant, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway
Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan
Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis, Missouri
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Tate Modern, London, England
Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Woman’s Club of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Hess Collection, Art Museum, Napa Valley, California
Seoul Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C
Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea
Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York
Kunstindustrimuseet, Oslo, Norway
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California
Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, Ohio
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, D.C
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, México City, México
William H. Van Every Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, Florida Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, New York Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, Japan
37
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© 2018 Marlborough Gallery, Inc. ISBN 978-0-89797-505-6
Important Works available by: Twentieth-Century European Masters; Post-War American Artists
DESIGN / Dan McCann P H OTO G R A P H Y / E r i n D av i s , Ja k e S m i s l o f f,
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P R I N T E D I N N E W YO R K B Y J U R I S T
FRONT COVER IMAGE: Coexistence (13 figures), 2002 burlap, each figure is unique dimensions variable
BACK COVER IMAGE: Anonim 4, 2009 bronze, unique 19 1/2 x 9 x 10 1/2 in., 49.5 x 22.9 x 26.7 cm
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