Publisher's Synopsis
The first monograph since the death of the artist in 2017, this book looks at the five decades of Magdalena Abakanowicz's career, beginning within the context of her native Poland, then expanding internationally as she moved out into the world. In doing so, it offers a new and comprehensive understanding of both the artist's formal developments and desire to ground metaphorical meanings in our own time.
In Knots: Abakanowicz and the Polish Art Scene in the Long 1960s, Magdalena Moskalewicz situates the early work of Abakanowicz within the artistic milieu of the People's Republic of Poland following the cultural Thaw of 1956, years critical for the foundation of Polish postwar modernity (nowoczesnosc) and, thus, for the formation of the artist. The author examines how Abakanowicz's evolving conception of space, understanding of the medium of weaving, and the terminology she adopted to describe her work find their origins in her training, collaborations, friendships of the period. Tracing these threads, for the first time Moskalewicz connects Abakanowicz's oeuvre to the Warsaw and wider Polish art scene with its cross-media experimentation, identifying the knots where the artist's investigations became entangled with those of her Polish peers.
The meaning and artistic potential media held for Abakanowicz remains unabated as her later sculptural work attests, as she eschewed the conventional bifurcation of abstraction and figuration. This story is compellingly carried forward by Michael Brenson as he leads readers to a profound appreciation of the power - the real force and presence - that distinguishes her art in the history of sculpture. With uncommon perception and drawing upon his intimate knowledge of the artist, he takes us on the journey as her artistic search unfolded over the next forty years. In spite of multiple turns in making, this lead essay reveals the constant threads and driving concerns for an artist for whom making was a necessity and creativity her life blood.
