Magdalena Abakanowicz. Space of Unknown Growth

MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s (born 1930) Space of Unknown Growth spans the area of 2, 012 square metres. The range of massive boulders, and twenty-two variously sized man-made forms, create an impressive landscape, a space for experience. The artist is always looking for indefinite forms. Commenting on her work, she compares these forms to, “Life filed buds bursting in spring, ... stacks of hay in summer ... like unopened blooms”, and adds, “We can also find such outlines in the human body ...” Everyone gives ones own meaning to these anonymous objects. According to Abakanowicz, many things can not be explained. “You open the door and find another behind, you open that one and find one more, which you can not open at all ...”

Since she began exhibiting outside Poland in the 1960s, the artist has traveled widely round the world. She has even visited Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Mexico, and has taken part in a great number of international exhibitions. The artist is interested not only in contemporary art, but also in the art of primitive societies. The scale of Abakanowicz’s art is grand, according to art critic Jasia Reichardt, her vision appropriate to nothing less than the creation of new stars and planets.

Michael Brenson writes about Abakanowicz’s importance to the history of modern sculpture and remembers, that, “as soon as I immersed myself in Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work, it was clear to me that one of its most remarkable characteristics was its ability, like the voice of Luciano Pavarotti or Billie Holiday, to carry within it an entire culture. .... Abakanowicz is very Polish, yet she belongs to the world.”

Letter of Magdalena Abakanowicz

The Collection

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