Why Magdalena Abakanowicz Refused to Be Decorative

15_magdalena_abakanowicz.jpg, default, ‘Dłonie’ (Hands), a photograph by Jarosław Pijarowski

Why did Magdalena Abakanowicz decide to distance herself from textile art? And could a woman born before the Second World War, who was making a name for herself in the art world, really afford to be associated with any kind of ‘softness’?

In photographs on the internet, Magdalena Abakanowicz is primarily shown among her Abakans, yet she is described as a ‘Polish sculptor’. Although the tapestries and Abakans that brought her fame are now classified as works of textile art, it was these works that enabled her to break through the Iron Curtain in the 1960s and make her mark on the international art scene while she was still in her early thirties. By the following decade, she had already stood out in the world, and it was then that she began exhibiting sculptures made from synthetic resin-hardened materials alongside soft materials such as rope and coarse canvas.

Abakanowicz’s transition from textiles to sculpture actually took place only in the early 1980s. The artist did not completely abandon ‘softness’ at that time, but the direction was clear. In the last two decades of the 20th century, bronze, wood and steel began to appear in her works, followed later by cast iron and stone. Balancing these two identities – that of a ‘weaver’ and that of a ‘sculptor’ – and drawing on both to shape her artistic image would become for Abakanowicz a path that was both artistic and personal. What might the artist have gained or lost by embracing (or distancing herself from) one of these identities?

Fabric – nothing important

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View from the exhibition ‘Every Tangle of Thread and Rope’ by Magdalena Abakanowicz, 2023, Tate Modern, London, photo: Aaron Chown/PA Images/Forum

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The 1960s were a period of heightened interest in artistic textiles, both in Poland and across the Global South. There were various reasons for this renaissance, one of which was that the medium – one that transcends boundaries – appealed to the ‘new’, progressive society searching for its identities. Fabric straddled the line between craft and fine art; between Western and non-Western traditions; and, finally, between practices associated with ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. It offered artists new material languages for talking about identity, politics and globalisation.

In 1962, the First International Textile Biennial was held in Lausanne. The event’s organisers, Pierre Pauli, Alice Pauli and Jean Lurçat, wrote that the main reason for this initiative was a desire to respond to the needs of the ‘new society’ that had emerged from the experiences of the avant-garde, modernism and the trauma of the Second World War. According to Le Corbusier, tapestry was intended to reflect the nomadic nature of this society, which was abandoning stability in favour of movement. The aim and aspiration of CITAM (The International Centre of Ancient and Modern Tapestry – the acronym was derived from the French name), the institution organising the biennial, was to establish tapestry as part of the ‘adventure of modern art’. Despite these ambitions, as art history shows, this was not entirely successful at the time.

In Poland, textile art offered freedom, as the artist Jolanta Owidzka – a contemporary of Abakanowicz who also travelled to Lausanne in 1962 – recalled in an interview for Dwutygodnik. It is worth noting that at the time, this medium was regarded by the public as purely utilitarian and decorative. In other words: ‘nothing important’. Despite these limitations, Owidzka’s career took a very different course from Abakanowicz’s – she remained faithful to the medium of textiles for the rest of her life. In an interview with Klara Czerniawska, she recalls the excellent mastery of the craft that Polish graduates acquired at the academy at that time, which enabled them to experiment: devising new techniques and combining those already known. ‘The Polish school of textile art was based on the fact that virtually everyone followed their own very individual path,’ she says. When asked about the problem of her work being treated as ‘merely’ functional, and about the various kinds of ‘concessions’ associated with this, she replies:

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We had much greater freedom to work as we pleased. But when Abakanowicz opened her first exhibition at Kordegarda – I think it was about a year […] after mine at Zachęta – she ran into difficulties because she was exhibiting painted textiles. Only when she displayed a copy of Stażewski’s design, made in a very ‘weaving-like’ style, did the committee allow the exhibition to open. Abakanowicz very quickly turned her attention to sculpture and afterwards she didn’t even want her work to be associated with weaving.

The interview reveals the artist’s resentment towards Abakanowicz, stemming from the fact that Abakanowicz helped to revitalise the textile art, only to subsequently abandon it. ‘Women artists working with textiles suddenly started painting and creating installations, and refused to admit they were weavers at all!’ says Owidzka.

Excluded

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‘Turquoise Abakan’, 1969, personal technique, linen, sisal, fabrics, dimensions 350 × 200 × 200 cm, collection of the National Museum in Warsaw

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When Abakanowicz described her artistic journey, she recalled that she had not been accepted onto the sculpture course she had applied for, and that later, at the Academy of Fine Arts, her painting had been criticised. It was then that she turned to weaving. She recognised the untapped potential of this medium – she later admitted quite openly that it was precisely because of these ‘limitations’ that she had the chance to ‘stand out’ and ‘make a name for herself’ in it.

In Abakanowicz’s visionary work, I see a strong yearning for individualism. The artist sees herself as someone excluded on many levels: first, as a member of the nobility in communist Poland; second, as a person of Tatar descent in a post-war, homogeneous society; and third, as an artist whose work, in her view, was not appreciated. Finally, Abakanowicz sought the ‘mystery of the world’ at a time when Pop Art and Conceptual Art were in vogue. I detect a fair amount of contempt in Abakanowicz’s tone when she speaks of the beginnings of her artistic career: ‘I was […] a complete idiot with those fabrics, to which I attached such great significance’.

So here we have an artist with a strong sense of exclusion, consistently striving for individuality, and an underappreciated field of artistic craftsmanship that brings together, across borders, people who are interested, ambitious, strong-willed and searching for their own identities. In Lausanne in the early 1960s, Polish artists received widespread acclaim for their innovation and masterful craftsmanship. Abakanowicz, however, would go a step further, freeing her textiles from the wall. In 1965, she would win a gold medal at the São Paulo Biennial, an event no longer dedicated to artistic textiles but showcasing the international contemporary art scene. It could be said that the efforts of the Western weaving community to break away from the realm of craftsmanship and elevate their art to the status of high art were, at least in Abakanowicz’s case, successful.

‘This is a ghetto’

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A view from the exhibition ‘Abakanowicz. No Rules. Tapestries and Abakans’ at the Wawel Castle, Wawel Royal Castle, 2025, photo: Jeremi Dobrzański, Wawel Royal Castle

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In the 1960s, there was a widespread stereotype that weaving was a woman’s domain. To understand Abakanowicz’s decision to change her artistic medium, it is necessary to grasp the complex issue of the social role women played at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. Magdalena Abakanowicz’s case is unique in that she had access to ‘the world’ on a scale that was, at the time, virtually unattainable for Polish artists. One might therefore assume that her reflections on female agency were influenced, for instance, by second-wave feminism in the United States and the Western world of the 1960s. This cultural revolution gradually reached Eastern Europe a decade later, in the 1970s.

Agata Jakubowska, in examining the circulation of feminist thought in communist Poland, cites the example of Abakanowicz as evidence that exposure to and engagement with the feminist art movement do not necessarily lead to the adoption of those ideas. As Jakubowska notes, Abakanowicz had a unique opportunity to meet other women artists on at least two occasions: during the exhibition Deliberate Entanglements: An Exhibition of Fabric Forms at the University of California gallery in 1971, and during her solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum the same year. According to the researcher, many of the female viewers were part of the Californian women’s art movement, and the reception of Abakanowicz’s works was enthusiastic; they were seen as ‘a clear manifestation of women’s art and female sexual identity’.

Despite all this, Abakanowicz did not consider herself part of the feminist movement. In an interview with Barbara Rose, she explained:

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[W]hen I was studying at the academy, I knew that the boys would get on with their work, would focus on their careers, while the girls would get married, have children and forget all about it. […] There are people who create art, and gender plays no part in that. When I hear the words ‘feminine’ or ‘women’, I immediately have an allergic reaction.

Abakanowicz attached particular importance to the consistency that makes artistic endeavour possible. In her view, women are by nature less consistent because they are hampered by ‘restrictions’ such as children. ‘That is how nature has made us. It is a ghetto.’ The artist reveals a complete lack of understanding of feminist thought and the issues it addresses. She says: ‘Men have their strengths and weaknesses, and so do we. So, what is this struggle all about? I don’t know. Is it about being better than we are? Or is it about not doing what nature intends us to do?’

Abakanowicz reduces the complex issues surrounding systemic inequalities and exclusion to women’s struggle for dominance. This strikes me as symptomatic – the artist distances herself not only from forms of expression associated with ‘femininity’ but also from her own subjectivity as a woman. This leads us to a second issue, namely an aversion to anything associated with ‘femininity or women’.

What can be achieved through weaving

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Magdalena Abakanowicz against the backdrop of the exhibition in the Chapel of St Louis at the La Salpêtrière church in Paris, France, 4 May 2004, photo: Raphael Gaillarde/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

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Abakanowicz’s interest in textiles endured for roughly two decades. In 1973, she described Kompozycja Monumentalna (Monumental Composition) as follows: ‘This work is significant in my oeuvre, for it brings the Abakan period (three-dimensional woven forms) to a close and marks the beginning of a period of commentary on the human condition.’ By then, she was a mature artist, already gaining international renown. Her art is categorised within the field of textile art, which the West often interprets as a political statement highlighting the contrast between fine art and applied art and as being directly linked to the oppression of women.

However, the Polish artist chose this path as a necessary means of ‘making a name for herself’. In 1969, she stated: ‘Tapestry, with its decorative function, never interested me. I simply became very interested in everything that can be achieved through weaving’. After her thorough and long-standing exploration of the medium, moving away from textiles would therefore be a necessary step to secure the position she desired and to avoid the connotations she had encountered in the Californian art scene.

Abakanowicz would begin to favour sculpture, which would, in one fell swoop, grant her access to circles associated with ‘high’ art while cutting her off from ‘inconsistent’ and ‘rowdy’ women. Sculpting, she would not be forced to ‘fight’ to be recognised as an artist, and would gain the prestige and luxury of engaging in philosophical and existential reflections on the human condition. As Karol Sienkiewicz wrote in his review of the Splendor Tkaniny (The Splendour of Textiles) exhibition at Zachęta in 2012: ‘Leaving aside her later works and the question of whether this is still textiles or already sculpture, and whether she was right to replace the ‘feminine’ loom with the ‘masculine’ chisel, one thing must be acknowledged of Abakanowicz: she was able to foresee that interest in textiles as an autonomous medium would prove to be short-lived. This, too, is a form of politics.’

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Magdalena Abakanowicz, ‘Space of Unknown Growth’, 1997–1998, 22 concrete forms of various sizes. Europos Parkas Sculpture Centre near Vilnius, Lithuania, photo: Creativecommons.org/CC BY 2.5

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One of Abakanowicz’s long-standing correspondents was Jasia Reichardt, a British critic and curator of Polish origin, who played a key role in the artist’s transition from weaver to sculptor and in the resulting PR strategy. In 1971, Abakanowicz asked her to write a text for the catalogue of her solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf: ‘It would be a joy and an honour for me. Contrary to my intentions, I am surrounded by weaving specialists and have never received a review or analysis of my work from an artistic perspective.’ This marked the start of a friendship between the two women; in the years that followed, Reichardt regularly wrote about Abakanowicz – her legend grew, and the image she was actively shaping took the desired form.

Twenty years later, Abakanowicz was already a ‘sculptor’. In the description of the monograph published in 1995 at the expense of the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, her work is placed ‘among the most interesting achievements in 20th-century sculpture from the moment she began creating a series of monumental soft sculptures known as Abakans in the 1960s.’ The album presents most of the artist’s sculptural series created up to the 1990s. The word ‘textile’ does not appear in the publication even once. It was not until the early 2000s that Abakanowicz’s career began to be re-evaluated, and her links with craft have been consistently re-established.

Re-evaluations

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Magdalena Abakanowicz, ‘Życie Warszawy’, 1973, tapestry, in the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław, photo: Zachęta National Gallery of Art

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Magdalena Abakanowicz, "Życie Warszawy", 1973, tapiseria, wł. Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu, fot. Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki

In his essay Obiekt z Realnego Życia. O Gobelinie Życie Warszawy Magdaleny Abakanowicz (An Object from Real Life: On Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Tapestry Życie Warszawy), published in Obieg in 2006, Waldemar Braniewski drew attention to the figure of Jasia Reichardt. The article is an excellent example of the aforementioned re-evaluation, and the art historian’s conclusions remain relevant today. Braniewski notes that 1990s publications on the artist were dominated by existential and impressionistic reflections, and it was Reichardt, among others, who popularised this very style of writing about Abakanowicz’s work:

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A characteristic feature of these texts is the attempt to interpret Abakanowicz’s works through the prism of existential metaphors, while ignoring the historical genesis and context of her art, as well as the explicit interpretation of her work as sculpture rather than textile art and the accompanying attempts to identify a specifically sculptural context for her works.

Baraniewski’s text focuses on the 1973 tapestry Życie Warszawy, which depicts the front page of the eponymous newspaper. It was woven for the Warszawa w Sztuce (Warsaw in Art) exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery and was enthusiastically received. The editorial team of the Życie Warszawy newspaper purchased the work and, in the same year, published an interview with Abakanowicz on the front page to promote it. Baraniewski drew on that interview – as well as a later self-commentary by Abakanowicz from the early 1990s, which was displayed in a frame next to the tapestry Życie Warszawy at the National Museum in Wrocław, where it was eventually transferred in 1991.

The discrepancies between the two sources are glaring. ‘The number of contradictory facts and their interpretations in both texts is astonishing, but also disturbing. It gives the impression that Abakanowicz wants to escape from her own creation, that she is trying to neutralise it with self-commentary’, writes Baraniewski. One of the issues he raises concerns authorship. In the interview, the artist described the tapestry as a technical challenge and said she had struggled to execute all the details.

In the self-commentary from the 1990s, on the other hand, she writes about commissioning a French weaver to produce a tapestry based on her design. These texts, from two different periods of Abakanowicz’s creative activity – one from the start of her career and the other from her mature period – reveal the discord between the artist’s two distinct artistic identities. Abakanowicz of the 1990s – the ‘sculptor’ who created inspired, existential and monumental sculptures – cannot come to terms with Abakanowicz the ‘weaver’, who produced a tapestry that may well have been modern by 1970s standards, but which bears the hallmarks of hackwork and sycophancy. In this context, the need to take history into one’s own hands, or to negotiate reality, strikes me as an obvious desire that Abakanowicz cannot resist.

I refer to Baraniewski’s text primarily to illustrate how Abakanowicz actively shaped her image, and secondly, to draw attention to the academic community’s disapproval of such practices. The researcher takes a harsh view of Abakanowicz’s actions, warning that her later self-commentary risks replacing the historical reality of the work from the early Gierek era with a carefully framed ‘true story’. I agree with the art historian’s call to verify sources, but as I bring this piece to a close, I would also like to acknowledge the empathy I have come to feel after two months of reading about Abakanowicz’s life.

Strong in a ‘manly’ way

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‘Androgyne’ (In homage to Witkacy), 1984 / 1985, jute, resin, wood, 115 × 172 × 95 cm, collection of Galeria Studio, Warsaw, photo: K. Mount

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I imagine her in a man’s world, determined at all costs to realise her artistic vision and to be treated on an equal footing with other artists. The path to achieving this goal meant the ruthless rejection of the category of femininity, which Abakanowicz associated with inconsistency, ghettoisation and weakness. She had to be strong ‘in a manly way’, and, according to the sources, she succeeded. The monograph on the artist portrays her as a highly disciplined woman who worked hard throughout her life. She could swim across a lake and back; her physical strength was said to be equal to that of two men. The only kind of ‘emotionality’ she allowed herself was sensitivity to human suffering and to nature. Her priority was always independence. When she recalled her youth and her husband, she said:

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I told him that if my work is successful, it’s probably because I can concentrate. I remember that when I was working on the Abakans, I was a young, perhaps pretty, woman, and I was completely cut off from friends, dance parties, and all that sort of thing. I would often say to my husband: ‘If you want to go out, please do go.’

She draws a clear line between herself and other women, denying them sufficient ‘concentration’ because motherhood distracts them. Abakanowicz had no children.

‘I don’t like being adorned,’ the artist replied to Barbara Rose, who noted that she had never seen Abakanowicz wearing jewellery. The only exception was the family signet ring she inherited from her father, which she wore throughout her life. Abakanowicz attributed her aversion to jewellery to the trauma of the war, which instilled in her a distaste for material possessions and a loathing of the nouveau riche style. I, however, would venture a different conclusion – jewellery is superfluous because it is merely decorative. It is a useless trinket during deep contemplation aimed at creating a work of art about the human condition.

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Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1972, photo: Andrzej Wiernicki /Forum

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I am writing this piece from the perspective of a woman for whom it is obvious that being ‘strong in a manly way’ is no longer a sign of individuality, but brings frustration and pressure. I wear my own jewellery as a superstition to protect me from evil and bring good luck. I promised myself, however, not to judge Abakanowicz, who has no doubt faced enormous pressure and stress throughout her career. One of her statements truly touched me:

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Every trip to the so-called capitalist world could mean a nervous breakdown, a disaster, or an adventure. Permission to travel could be withdrawn at any time. […] Finally seated on the plane, I once again found myself the winner in this race. The price I paid for victory was high.

The woman who spoke these words was facing the uncertainty of her situation. She stood to lose her artistic career, her identity as a citizen of the world, and, in a sense, her identity as a Polish woman. She also risked failing to fulfil her profound need to communicate with people through art.

Today, history is coming full circle, and interest in textiles is experiencing yet another revival. For several years now, we have seen textiles return to the programmes of art institutions. Exhibitions such as Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican Art Gallery in 2024 and the domestic International Textile Triennial in Łódź aim to explore contemporary issues on a par with similar contemporary art events. I would like to believe that today’s creative people, female and male textile artists, who will one day decide to move away from this medium, will not feel compelled to cut themselves off from it.

^{Bibliography:}

^{M. J. Jacob, J. Dally,}^{Magdalena Abakanowicz. Writings and Conversations,}^{Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Skira editor S.p.A., Mediolan 2022;}

^{Première Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie Lausanne}^{, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Lozanna 1962, https://editionsanthonykrafft.com/media/filer_public/50/8d/508d30c9-aecd-4346-9491-c10511a4cb43/la-premiere-biennale-internationale-de-la-tapisserie-lausanne-62-rene-berger-jean-lurcat-le-corbusier-r-j-neutra.pdf;}

^{A. Coxon, M. J. Jacob,}^{Magdalena Abakanowicz}^{, Tate Publishing UK, London 2023;}

^{J. Inglot,}^{The Figurative Sculpture of Magdalena Abakanowicz: Bodies, Environments, and Myths,}^{CA: University of California Press, Berkeley 2004;}

^{A. Jakubowska,}^{The Circulation of Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland,}^[in:]^{Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present}^{, ed. Beata Hock, Anu Allas, Routledge, 2018, pp. 135–148;}

^{A. Jakubowska,}^{The “Abakans” and the Feminist Revolution}^[in:]^{Regarding the Popular: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture}^{, ed. S. Bru, L.}^{Nuijs, B. Hjartarson, P. Nicholls, T. Ørum, H. Berg, Berlin 2011, pp.253–265;}

^{K. Czerniawska,}^{Nie szydełkuję w długie zimowe wieczory. Rozmowa z Jolantą Owidzką,}^{Dwutygodnik, https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/4413-nie-szydelkuje-w-dlugie-zimowe-wieczory.html;}

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Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur

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