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MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ (1930-2017)
She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Sopot and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In the early period of artistic career, she was mostly working with gouache and experimenting with fabric painting and metal sculptures. She won world-wide recognition thanks to her monumental fabric sculptures, created since the early sixties. Abakanowicz changed the traditional perception of fabric as a merely weaved or stiched material and instead made it an individual work of art. In the seventies, the artist created spacial compositions of tangled ropes and sculptures known as Alterations, using linen and synthetic resins as material. In the next decade her art evolved into open-air sculptures and compositions of stone and bronze or metal and wood.
Selected awards:
Grand Prix 8. Art. Bienale, Sao Paulo (1965)
Gottfried von Herder, Vienna(1979)
Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, New York (1982)
Centre of Sculpture, New York (1993)
Leonardo da Vinci, Mexico (1997)
Visionaries l, American Craft Museum, New York (2000)
