Magdalena Abakanowicz Poland, 1930-2017

Magdalena Abakanowicz is one of the most significant Polish artists of the second half of the 20th century and is considered highly innovative for integrating textiles into sculpture. From the 1960s onwards, the artist presented sculptures in installation arrangements and garnered a reputation as an early advocate of installation art. Noted for representing Poland at the Venice Biennale in 1980, her textile-based practice is deemed an early precursor to environmental and feminist art.

Small Figure in Iron House is a sculpture from a series of works of figures in iron houses from 1989-1990, the period Communism came to an end in Poland. The present work shows a flat, beige, small, and headless figure made from burlap and seated inside an iron cage, with hands calmly resting on the thigh. While the title of the work sets a pleasing tone – houses are private spaces of comfort , Small Figure in Iron House's appearance is reminiscent of a burial site. The figure, wrapped like a mummy, is headless and reminds us of the inevitability of death; the 'house', on the other hand, is a see-through cage that fully exposes the individual, providing no shelter or protection. A close comparable to the present work is Figure in Iron House (1989-1990), a larger installation from the artist from the same year. Other artists who explore the motif of confinement include Louise Bourgeois, whose series of Cells typically shows dolls trapped in cages and is an ode to fragility, abuse, and childhood trauma, as well as Paloma Varga Weisz, whose work Lying Man (2016) strongly recalls a burial.

Abakanowicz established herself internationally from the early 1960s onwards and gained a reputation for her monumental and daunting textile-based hanging sculptures, known as Abakans (in reference to the artist’s name). These were arranged in forest-like constellations and are often deemed a precursor to installation artists, such as Joseph Beuys, who famously created installation arrangements with fabric, particularly with felt. By 1989, Abakanowicz had already represented Poland at the 39th Venice Biennale and refined her sculptural practice that, while still textile-based, was more concerned with representing biomorphic forms and the human body. Speaking of textiles, the artist has said that “[she] see[s] fibre as the basic element constructing the organic world on our planet…. It is from fibre that all living organisms are built, the tissue of plants, leaves and ourselves”. Other artists to have resonated with fabric as a medium include Kiki Smith and Ewa Pachucka. Pachucka, like Abakanowicz, is of Polish descent; Pachucka was drawn to sisal and hemp in her three-dimensional sculptural installations as she deemed these thick fabrics to emulate the texture of human skin.

Abakanowicz experienced the great turmoil Poland went through in the 20th century first-hand. Born into a privileged land-owning family in 1930s Poland surrounded by forests, she witnessed the Second World War and the rise of Communism that led to her family falling into poverty. These traumas, we may assume, fed into Abakanowicz’s personal practice. While her work is heavy and emotionally touching, its solitary frankness, monotonous palette, and simplicity are also calming, providing a refuge from the cacophony of stimuli of everyday life.

Having been born into a wealthy family in Poland in the 1930s, Abakanowicz experienced the turmoil of the Second World War and the rise of communism, which led to the dispossession of her family. She entered art school at age 20 and was encouraged to work with textiles rather than painting, with the latter heavily censored at the time. With textiles, Abakanowicz discovered her distinctive and independent artistic voice. From the mid-1960s onwards, Abakanowicz gained a reputation internationally for her Abakan sculptural arrangements and in the late 1970s and 1980s, started to explore the human form in sculpture.