Magdalena Abakanowicz

‘I never studied weaving. I lived among painters and sculptors. I am concerned with matter and shape.

In the mid-fifties, European weaving had been a reliable handcraft with very strictly defined techniques, intended for utilitarian purposes. It could be divided into French tapisserie and its derivatives in other countries, and into folk weaving.

The French tapisserie was woven by craftsmen from a cartoon painted by an artist or directly from a painting. The stitch was always the same: very fine, and enabling one to reproduce exactly the strokes of a brush or pencil. Folk weaving had several techniques: Kilim/rug/sumak, and double weaving. The patterns were fine, decorative and based on botanical or geometrical motifs.

At that time Poland was the only European country where some artists started to show interest in weaving as a means of free artistic expression and they carried out experiments to combine various techniques and materials.

I joined them because I felt that what I had to say had to be said in a soft material and on a large scale. Interweaving various raw materials, I obtained relief-like surfaces of many meanings. I felt that a skein of thread contained enormous and as yet undiscovered possibilities for expression.

I started making three-dimensional woven forms as a protest against convention and out of a longing for soft work into which one can get physically and which one can perceive by touch. This widens the awareness of the work and makes it possible to really know it.’

Sourced from: Exhibition press release (Artist’s statement by Magdalena Abakanowicz)