Magdalena Abakanowicz | The Group of Five | 2014

Courtesy of Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago

Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz is one of the most important artists to come out of Poland in the post-World War II period. The artist was nine when the war broke out, and she witnessed violence both against her own family and against her fellow countrymen as a nurse’s aid. Abakanowicz studied art when Socialist Realism was the only approved style, so she sought ways in which she could create work that addressed her contemporary world without censorship. She used easily accessible fabrics and soft materials, creating large constructions that could be shields, or shelter, earning her international praise. 

Abakanowicz began making figurative works with fiber and burlap, the rough, tactile surfaces suggesting physical or psychological scarring earned through life. Her sitting and standing figures recall ancient Egyptian monoliths as well as mummies, a typology so universal as to be immediately recognizable wherever shown. She delved into mythical stories, such as King Arthur’s Court, and the natural world, but it is her crowds of hunched backs or walking crowds that are most familiar to viewers. 

Not until the late 1980s did the artist start to make her statues, pods, and animals in metal. The artist was able to maintain a sense of vulnerability of her early works while suggesting that humans can be heroic and barbaric at the same time. Abakaownicz’s headless bodies suggest the loss of individuality in the crowd, the transformation from unique human to mob, a transformation that has renewed presence in our contemporary polarized world.