Magdalena Abakanowicz: Writings and Conversations

Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz was a "force of gravity," wrote art historian Barbara Rose in 1984. Indeed, and we fell it as she lays out her mission: from early ruptures with tapestry tradition to the invention of her signature woven work-Abakans-to those of human form; through public projects responsive to the history and particularities of place; and her vision for an Arboreal Architecture sympathetic to living in concert with the earth and kind to the climate. This first compendium of the artist's writings throughout her career demonstrates her need to communicate beyond her Warsaw studio with spirited vitality and urgency. It serves as a companion to her profoundly moving autobiography Fate and Art (Skira second edition, 2020), whose first iteration begun in 1978 we find here, "Portrait x 20." Also included, from that same year, is a little-known lecture to artists assembled for a conference in the Bay Area. In it she speaks intimately of the aesthetic and social agenda that drove her making: "It is only with friends that I discuss problems that I have and to which I attach importance. I have come to discuss them with you." Here, too, is her 1979 prose poem, "Soft," which anticipated her entry for the Polish Pavilion in the 1980 Venice Biennale, catapulting her onto the international scene. Ten interviews span thirty years, including Rose's never-before-published conversation conducted from the late eighties to early nineties. With correspondence among twenty persons formative in her career-and she in their lives-this volume provides an essential sourcebook for scholars. Yet, by bringing archives to life, it is an equally fascinating read for others, both in and out of the art world, who can now enter into the soul of an artist so perceptive of her times and so capable of marshaling the power of art to speak of wider human concerns.