Magdalena Abakanowicz, WITHOUT TITLE, 1961

84.0 x 122.0cm - oil, plate signed l.d.: Abakanowicz 61

Authenticity of the painting confirmed by the Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz-Kosmowska and Jan Kosmowski Foundation, based in Warsaw.

Magdalena Abakanowicz is one of the most outstanding contemporary Polish artists, and the monographic presentation of her works at London's Tate Modern, which ended last month, confirms her special place among the classics of modernity.

Her first important independent achievement became the spatial textiles, or rather soft sculptural forms, created in the 1960s, called abacanas after her name, which marked a new direction in the development of textiles. In the 1970s, cycles of figural and non-figural sculptures were created from canvas and resin-cured materials. Then, in the 1980s, large-scale spatial realizations in bronze or stone began to emerge.

Before the artist achieved fame as a sculptor, she started with painting in the 1950s. This is how she recalled that time: I started with painting. I had bad conditions and no opportunity to do sculpture, and I needed large spaces, to hide from reality, which was not favorable. So I started making huge gouaches on stapled sheet canvases, little known today. Then I started weaving it so I could roll it. I was fascinated that I could build up this surface not only painterly, but also structurally (Not only abacanas. Interview with Magdalena Abakanowicz, interviewed by Katarzyna Bik-Pikoń, "Gazeta w Krakowie," 23 I 1993 No. 19).

♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on copyright and related rights (droit de suite)

Designs for fabrics were created on paper or fiberboard, usually on a scale corresponding to the fabric being prepared. These were abstract compositions, but with references to the organic world (fish, butterflies, colorful flowers), for example, paintings Fish, 1956-57 and Iris, 1955-56. About the painting of Magdalena Abakanowicz at that time wrote in 1959 Danuta Wróblewska: The abstraction of forms painted on canvas has a distant analogy in the phenomena and shapes of the organic world. Flowering, dying, growth, all the vitality of plant organisms ignited the imagination of the painter. There is a concentrated element of biologism in Abakanowicz -Kosmowska's canvases (D.W. (Danuta Wróblewska), Tkaniny malowane Magdaleny Abakanowicz-Kosmowskiej, "Przegląd Kulturalny", No. 16, April 16, 1959).

Magdalena Abakanowicz (born Falenty near Warsaw 20 June 1930- Warsaw 20. IV 2017) studied in Gdansk (1949-1950) and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1950-1954). She taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań (1965-1990). Since the early 1960s, she was involved in unique textiles, creating original spatial forms, named "abakans" after her. In 1965 she won the Gold Medal at the Second International Biennale of Textiles in Sao Paulo. In the 1970s, she began creating figural series in resin-cured jute: "Alterations" (from 1974), "Backs" (1976-80), "Embryology" (1978-80), "Crowds" (from 1986). Since the 1980s, the artist has been practicing outdoor sculpture, using wood, clay, stone and casts (the "Crowds" groups, "Katharsis" in a private collection in Italy, "Negev" - 7 colossal stone circles in the Israel Museum park in Jerusalem). In 1987 she began work on "War Games," large projectile-like forms constructed from natural wood and iron. Since 1991, she has been developing the concept of "arboreal architecture," originally designed as an extension of the La Defense axis in Paris, which she promotes as a solution to the problems of large agglomerations. She has participated in the most important reviews of contemporary art, such as the Sao Paulo Biennale (1965, 1979), the Venice Biennale (1968, 1980) and others. She has won many Polish and foreign awards.