Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz (b. 1930, d. 2017) is the most famous Polish artist, internationally recognized on the art scene. She was a sculptor, textile and installation artist. She studied in Sopot and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1979, she received the title of professor at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań, where she headed the tapestry studio from 1965 to 1990.Initially, she worked only in painting. It was only at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s that her spatial compositions—the famous Abakans—completely changed the understanding of the visual possibilities of textile, the use of materials, and the relationship between the artwork and its environment, exerting a huge influence on the development of the field worldwide. From the early 1980s onward, she worked mainly in sculpture. For her monumental works, she also used wood, metal, and stone. She also created architectural projects.In 1962, at the famous Lausanne Biennale of Tapestry, Abakanowicz’s composition of white forms covering 12 square metres caused a sensation. In 1965, one of her spatial tapestries won the Grand Prix at the São Paulo Biennale, securing her broad international recognition. The artist represented Poland at the Venice Biennale (1980), and her works are held in some of the world’s most renowned art collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In May 2023, her solo exhibition was held at the Tate Modern in London. In recent years, Magdalena Abakanowicz’s works have repeatedly broken records on the Polish art market.