Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in Falenty, Poland to a noble landowner family. When she was 9 years old, Nazi Germany occupied Poland, and the family moved to Warsaw and became involved in the Polish resistance. At 19, Abakanowicz began her art education. At the time, Poland was under Soviet control, which outlawed and censored every form of art except Socialist realism, characterized by depicting the utopianism of communism using images of nature, industry, and the human body. She was required to learn textile design, fiber design, screen printing. Techniques she will use later in her career.
In 1954, after receiving her degree at 24, Abakanowicz began to work on her art while supporting herself by designing material for ties at a silk factory. In the late 1950s, she created her first series of large watercolors and gouaches obliged to the Communist standard of art. During this period, Poland had a social and cultural change that liberated the soviet form of art and exposed Abakanowicz to western art. Influenced by Constructivism, her work became more structured and geometric. Exploring her own artistic language, Abakanowicz started weaving as an art form. In 1960, at the age of 30, she had her first solo exhibit presenting a series of weaving alongside a collection of watercolors and gouaches works. The Polish textile and fiber design movement have embraced Abakanowicz, and she was included in the first Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie in Switzerland.
By the end of the 1960s, Abakanowicz has developed her own weaving technique, expressed in her work series, Abakans – a three-dimensional fiber work. In the following decade, she created huge figurative textile sculptures of headless human figures made with sackcloth sewed together with synthetic resins. Afterward, she received various public commissions and expanded her material use, working with metals, stone, wood, and clay. In 1989, at the age of 59, Abakanowicz presented her most political work – War Games, a series of tree trunks placed on metal frames, bandaged with rags, and trapped in steel hoops. At 76, she installed her final piece, Agora, located in Chicago’s Grant Park. The installation consists of more than 100 nine feet tall iron headless figures.
Abakanowicz’s art has been autobiographical, influenced by her experiences growing up during WW2 and under the Soviet regime. Her ambiguous sculptures are reflecting various conditions of humanity from a specific historical perspective. Throughout her career, she had more than 40 solo exhibitions worldwide, including at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and the Museum Sonje in Korea. Abakanowicz died at the age of 86.
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