ABAKANOWICZ

By means of this exhibition, to be organised with material from the collection at the National Museum in Wroclaw (Poland), the Museum of Fine Arts wishes to salute the artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, 75 years old this year. The exhibition will be staged with the support of the District Government of Upper Silesia and with the co-operation of the Polish Institute in Budapest. Work by Abakanowicz has not been seen in Hungary for almost two decades. The material on display will consist of approximately 100 works and will present creations made by the artist over the last twenty years.

If a selection were to be made of the world’s leading contemporary artists, then Magdalena Abakanowicz would surely be among the very first. This is no exaggeration. Abakanowicz, who studied both painting and textiles, was by the mid-1960s an honorary member of many world-famous academies of art, including the American Academy of Art and Letters. She has been awarded many prestigious prizes, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. The most eminent of the post-war Polish avant-garde artists, she exerts an influence on the theatre art of such figures as Kantor, Szajna and Grotowski, art that is well known in Hungary, too.

Abakanowicz’s works express deep meditation on the reality that surrounds her. She fashions her outdoor works from stone, wood and metal, and exhibits them in natural and cultural settings that give inspiration. Her sculptures made with sacking – seated and standing figures – exert a powerful effect on the emotions.

Her installation ‘Embryology’ – a similarly very affecting work displayed at the Venice Biennale of 1980 – will feature at our exhibition. In 1988, the Mûcsarnok (Kunsthalle) in Budapest invited the artist to a show to present her oeuvre. Of the material displayed there, ‘Cage’, which passed into the possession of the Museum of Fine Arts, and ‘War Games’, monumental tree-trunk sculptures equipped with caps of metal and made by the artist especially for the Mûcsarnok event, are among the outstanding pieces to be presented by us also.

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ABAKANOWICZ
Magdalena Abakanowicz