Magdalena Abakanowicz started at the loom and ended in the public square. In the 1960s she pulled woven textiles off the wall and hung them in space as dark, enveloping forms. In the 1970s she began moulding coarse burlap into hollow human shells, then repeated them by the dozen. By 2006 a field of more than a hundred cast-iron figures stood in a Chicago park. For designers, her work is a long lesson in material honesty, the unit and the multiple, and what happens when texture is scaled up until a viewer can walk inside it.
A note on images: none of the Magdalena Abakanowicz works held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art is flagged public domain, so this guide describes her work in text only. For historic textiles that are cleared for reuse, browse the textiles collection in the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Magdalena Abakanowicz?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art records her as Polish, born in Falenty in 1930 and died in Warsaw in 2017. Published biographies give her birth date as 20 June 1930, and obituaries, including the notice published by the Kosciuszko Foundation, where she was an honorary trustee, record her death in Warsaw on 20 April 2017, aged 86.
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the early 1950s. Tate’s timeline says she was appointed to teach at the State Higher School of Plastic Arts in Poznań in 1965 and stayed until 1990; Britannica gives the same span but says she became a full professor in 1979.
A career in key works
The early weavings (1960s). Tate’s timeline records that in 1962 she was one of three Polish weavers invited to the first International Tapestry Biennial in Lausanne, her first international exhibition. The Art Institute of Chicago holds Czarna (1966), made of sisal, rope and horsehair: already more relief than tapestry.
The Abakans (mid-1960s to 1970s). Tate says the name “Abakan” first appeared in print in a 1964 article in the Polish magazine Zwierciadło, and that in 1965 she represented Poland at the 8th São Paulo Bienal and received the gold medal in applied arts. Tate owns Abakan Red (1969), made of sisal and measuring about four metres in each direction. The Art Institute of Chicago holds three textiles from this period: Brun Rouge (1970/73), in sisal, hemp and horsehair with raised coils; Humming Bird I (1970/74), in sisal and hemp with cut and uncut pile; and Le Feu et La Cendre (Fire and Cinders) (1973/75), in linen and sisal with knotted and wrapped three-dimensional forms.
Alterations and Backs (1970s–80s). In the 1970s she moved from weaving to moulding. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds Head (1976), recorded as moulded bast fibre. Her cycle known as Alterations included heads, seated figures, Embryology and Backs. The National Museum in Wrocław describes Backs as a group of 80 hollow, headless seated forms, built from burlap and glue over plaster casts of the body; the series is usually dated 1976–80, though some catalogues extend it. Tate’s timeline says she represented Poland at the 1980 Venice Biennale with an environment that showed Embryology and Backs together for the first time.
Burlap, wood and bronze (1980s–2000). The Met holds Androgyne III (1985), a seated figure in burlap, resin, wood, nails and string; Great Ursa (1987), a long, low form of wood and steel almost five metres wide; and Figure on a Trunk (2000), a bronze figure about 2.4 metres high.
Agora (2004–06). At the south end of Grant Park in Chicago stand 106 headless cast-iron figures, each about nine feet tall. The City of Chicago’s public art guide records that the Chicago Park District brought the work to the city in 2006 as a long-term loan from Poland’s Ministry of Culture, and that the artist supervised the placement of each figure that October. The figures were cast in Poland between 2004 and 2006.
What to look at in her work
Texture as the subject. In the Abakans the material is the image. The Art Institute’s catalogue records read like a materials list: sisal, hemp, horsehair, linen, wrapped cord, cut and uncut pile. Close up, the surface is all ridges, slits and coils; from across the room it reads as one dark mass.
A restricted palette. The titles tell you how narrow the range is: Czarna (Polish for “black”), Brun Rouge, Abakan Red. Undyed fibre, dark browns, rust and a few saturated reds carry everything. The colour comes from the fibre and dye, not from pictorial effects.
Form you can enter. The large Abakans hang from the ceiling with openings and folds deep enough to walk around and partly into. Tate’s 2022–23 exhibition Every Tangle of Thread and Rope hung many of them together in its long Blavatnik Building gallery, so visitors moved through them like a forest.
The unit and the multiple. From Backs onwards, the figure is a repeatable unit. Each shell is slightly different because each is formed by hand, yet together they read as a crowd. Nothing has a face. The variation lives in the surface, the slump of a shoulder, the creases in the burlap.
Technique: from loom to mould to foundry
- Weaving off the wall. The Abakans combine slit tapestry, plain weave with discontinuous wefts, supplementary pile and wrapped elements, as the Art Institute’s records describe. Instead of a flat tapestry, the weave is built into relief and then into volume.
- Rope and sisal. Tate notes that she began weaving with sisal taken from ropes at a time when other materials were hard to get. A practical constraint became a signature.
- Burlap over casts. For the figures she pressed glue- or resin-soaked burlap over plaster moulds of the body, then removed it to leave a stiff, hollow shell, according to the National Museum in Wrocław and the Met’s object records.
- Casting the crowd. In later public works such as Agora, the same idea moved into iron and bronze. The surface still carries the folds of the original fibre models, so even metal looks woven.
Her work sits alongside other artists who made fibre and soft materials sculptural. Compare our guides to Anni Albers and woven structure and to Judith Scott’s wrapped fibre sculptures.
How designers can borrow Magdalena Abakanowicz’s ideas
- Let the material speak first. In packaging, interiors or brand photography, pick one honest material, such as raw jute, recycled board or unbleached cotton, and make its texture the hero rather than a background.
- Design a unit, then repeat it with variation. A crowd works because every figure is the same idea made slightly differently. Apply this to icon sets, generative patterns or display installations: fix the silhouette, vary the surface.
- Restrict the palette. Two or three earthy tones plus one saturated red can hold a whole identity, as her titles suggest. Build a palette from your own material swatches with our image colour picker.
- Scale changes meaning. A small hand-woven sample feels domestic; the same structure at four metres feels architectural. Test patterns and textures at both sizes before you commit.
- Use absence. Her figures have no heads and no faces, which makes viewers project themselves onto them. In editorial and campaign design, cropping or withholding a face can make an image more open, not less.
Her sculptures and textiles are in copyright, so borrow the methods with your own materials rather than reproducing her works.
Where to see Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work
Agora stands outdoors in Grant Park, Chicago. Tate holds Abakan Red. The Met holds Androgyne III, Great Ursa and Figure on a Trunk; the Art Institute of Chicago holds Czarna, Brun Rouge, Humming Bird I and Fire and Cinders; and the Cleveland Museum of Art holds Head. The National Museum in Wrocław holds Backs.
Frequently asked questions
What are Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Abakans?
They are large, three-dimensional woven works, mostly in sisal, hemp, horsehair and other fibres, that hang in space instead of lying flat on a wall. Tate dates the name to a 1964 magazine article, and Abakan Red (1969) in Tate’s collection measures about four metres across.
What is Backs by Magdalena Abakanowicz?
Backs is a group of 80 hollow, headless seated forms made from burlap and glue over plaster casts, usually dated 1976–80. Tate’s timeline says it was first shown with Embryology at the 1980 Venice Biennale.
Where is Agora?
At the south end of Grant Park in Chicago, near Michigan Avenue and Roosevelt Road. It consists of 106 cast-iron figures, each about nine feet tall, installed in 2006 on loan from Poland’s Ministry of Culture.
Can I use Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work in my designs?
No. She died in 2017 and her works are in copyright. You can learn from her methods, such as fibre relief, repeated hand-made units and a restricted palette, but make your own work rather than reproducing hers.
