Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in Poland in 1930--she continues to reside in Warsaw.  She has lived to witness years of war and the resultant succession of political, social, and economic upheavals.  Her sculptures profoundly reflect the loss, hardships, and repression of those times and their effects on the human condition.  Although Abakanowicz’s body of work conveys associations with the artist’s personal history and that of her country, her sculptures speak to everyone through a universal language.  Space of Stone, Hand-Like Tree: Cecyna, Sage, and Sage B comprise the collection of Abakanowicz pieces at Grounds For Sculpture.

Space of Stone by Abakanowicz was created especially for Grounds For Sculpture.  The two varieties of granite were chosen by the artist because of the strong surface texture and the contrast between the stones' light and dark tonalities.  Twenty-two elements were cleaved from blocks of granite--the stones give the appearance of natural rock formations.  Abakanowicz’s intention was to place the stones in such a way as to set up an environment that, in the artist’s words, “We must enter, penetrate, become part of.”  By becoming an active participant with the sculpture, the viewer is asked to contemplate nature’s creativity, compare the scale of one’s self to the scale of the surroundings, and to experience the increasing compression and tension of space as one walks towards the center of the sculpture.  Space of Stone is an imposing sculpture that will soon be recognized as one of Abakanowicz’s major outdoor installations.

Hand-LikeTree: Cecyna, a towering, 12-foot bronze, was formerly on exhibit at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, an area at the south end of Central Park in New York City, along with the other five elements from the cycle, each in possession of an equally imposing presence.  The hollow form, as the title suggests, resembles both a decaying, textured tree trunk with branches long removed and a gesturing, gnarled hand drawn up into a fist.  Hand-Like Tree: Cecyna relates to other works by Abakanowicz in its simplicity of form redolent with the power of suggestion and emotional impact.  As with all of her works in bronze, it is a unique work of art and not part of an edition.

Abakanowicz's Sage B was shown previously at Grounds For Sculpture in 1993 in celebration of the opening of the Museum Building.  Sage and Sage B, both cast in bronze, also belong to the collection and are on view in the Water Garden. The sculpture that inspired the Sage cycle is entitled Figure on an Iron Seat, which depicts a seated adult form made from burlap.  It was created by Abakanowicz in 1988, a period when the artist was also concentrating on multiple burlap castings of adolescent figures.  When realized in bronze, the form was simplified--the hands placed on the figure’s lap melded into the knees and as a whole the figure became more abstract and monolithic.  As in all of Abakanowicz’s works, each Sage is a unique casting, and evidence of the ceramic shell is allowed to remain on the roughly textured surface; no polishing or patinating process is performed.  The placement of the headless Sage and Sage B on high, stepped blocks creates a physical and psychological distance between the seated figures and the viewer.

Abakanowicz has been given numerous solo exhibitions in major museums in many European and Asian countries, as well as in leading venues across the United States.  In addition to Space of Stone, significant permanent outdoor installations can be seen at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY; Olympic Park, Seoul, South Korea; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan; and in a recently developed area of the Philadelphia waterfront, to name but a few sites.  In the summer of 1996, Grounds For Sculpture devoted the galleries in the Museum Building to Abakanowicz’s works, which included examples of the War Games, Incarnations, Crowds, and Hoofed Mammal Head Cycles.  She is represented by Marlborough Gallery, New York.  Abakanowicz was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s 2005 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture. 

More information on this artist can be found at http://www.abakanowicz.art.pl/.

Space of Stone, 2002
Barre grey granite and black Pennsylvania granite;
22 elements, overall dimensions; 152" x 2172" x 828"
Courtesy of The Sculpture Foundation, Inc.
Photo: Ricardo Barros.com

Hand-Like Tree: Cecyna, 1994
cast bronze
148 7/8" 64 1/2" x 42 1/8"
Courtesy of The Sculpture Foundation, Inc. and
© Magdalena Abakanowicz,
courtesy, Marlborough Gallery
Photo: Ricardo Barros.com
This work is currently on view in a traveling exhibition in Sarasota, FL.

Sage, 1988
cast bronze
59 1/4" x 24 1/2" x 32"
Courtesy of The Sculpture Foundation, Inc.

Sage B, 1990
cast bronze
58 5/8" x 25 5/8" x 33 7/8"
Courtesy of The Sculpture Foundation, Inc.
Photo: Ricardo Barros.com