Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz-Kosmowska
Artist Name: Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz-Kosmowska
Nationality: Polish
Born: 20 June 1930 (Falenty, Poland)
Died: 20 April 2017 (aged 86)
Exhabition: Tate Modern
End of Exhibition: 21 May 2023
Abakan Red, large-scale Abakan sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz. Photograph Aaron Chown
Artist Quote: "Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind."
Born in Falenty Poland, Marta was known for her use of textiles as a sculptural medium and outdoor installations. She was one of the most important, radical artists of the 1960s and widely regarded as one of Poland's most internationally acclaimed artists. She was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, from 1965 to 1990 and a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In the 1960s, Abakanowicz created amazing woven sculptural objects that had really not been seen before in the art world. Her work was named after her and said to be an extension of herself, they were known as ‘Abakans’, large three-dimensional shapes that hung from ceilings.
This year (2022) the Tate Modern has hosted an exhibition of Marta's evocative work focusing in on her towering fibre installations. We at More Juice would highly recommend seeing her installation work as it is a truly inspiring exhibition. - Tate Modern’s 2022 exhibition
Tate Modern Information About The Show:
"In the 1960s and 70s, the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz created radical sculptures from woven fibre. They were soft not hard; ambiguous and organic; towering works that hung from the ceiling and pioneered a new form of installation. They became known as the Abakans.
This exhibition presents a rare opportunity to explore this extraordinary body of work. Many of the most significant Abakans will be brought together in a forest-like display in the 64-metre long gallery space of the Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern.
The exhibition explores this transformative period of Abakanowicz’s practice when her woven forms came off the wall and into three-dimensional space. With these works she brought soft, fibrous forms into a new relationship with sculpture. A selection of early textile pieces and her little-known drawings are also on show.
Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in 1930 in Poland and came of age during the Second World War. Living in Poland under the Communist regime, she established a career as an international artist and her work is included in many public and private collections around the world."
Reviews:
What Does More Juice Say About The Show?
“Well, go and see it! This artist may not have been on your radar before this exhibition, but she will be after you see this evocative display of woven organic structures! I always love viewing large abstract expressions of an artist's career, and this exhibition will not disappoint you with its pure scale, it brings a sense of wonderment to your senses. “
Time Out Says
5 out of 5 stars
"An ancient petrified forest has creaked forebodingly into life at Tate Modern. Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz’s huge, towering forms hover around you as you walk around this show of her work, enormous fabric sculptures that have emerged from some bog, and now hang in the dark, threatening to envelop and smother you. The only complaint is that there’s just not enough. Abakanowicz had a long, varied career and you’re left hungry to lose yourself in even more of her work.”
Evening Standard Says
4 out of 5 stars
“The only pity of this show, or any exhibition of her work today, is that, to protect the sculptures, you can no longer go inside them, enter the darkness and see the gallery’s lights like a constellation through the weave. Instead, you’ll have to live vicariously through Abakanowicz and others who are captured entering them in a film, which also shows various Abakans installed on sand dunes on Poland’s Baltic coast, like Surrealist sentinels.”
The Guardian Says
4 out of 5 stars
“Abakanowicz’s enormous textile works – in which giant forms evoke bodies, sex and domesticity – are undeniably powerful.
Every Tangle of Thread and Rope traces Magdalena Abakanowicz’s development as a textile artist from the mid 1950s until the late century, beginning with designs for tapestries and jacquard punched cards for weaving, rows of leaf-shapes, colourways and tryouts for decorative fabrics, but soon expands, as did her art, into sculpture and installation art.”
At Tate Modern until 21 May 2023 - Tate Modern’s 2022 exhibition
