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Magdalena Abakanowicz: gouache on linen canvas, 1960;
from the collection of the C. Museum of Textiles in Lodz; photo B. Sterk
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Part one of the major retrospective of textile works by Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) will be held at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łodz, Poland, from 30 November to 1 April 2018. The pieces present the textile revolution in post-war Poland in a nutshell!
The exhibition curator, Marta Kovalevska wanted to show the artist’s early development. She considers the period when Abakanowicz made tapestries the most important in her career. At that time, the medium of tapestry was still more closely associated with architecture and decorative art. Abakanowicz and a group of Polish weavers were the first to break all the rules in treating tapestry as an independent art form. In the early 1960s, Magdalena Abakanowicz began producing flat wall-based tapestries presenting a great many three-dimensional structures. With five Polish artists she participated in the first Lausanne Biennial, displaying very unusual works produced in diverse materials and structures. Since pieces were supposed to measure 12 square metres in size, the tapestry was thus created in the unusual size of 2 x 6 metres! Since Polish artists did not have money for the materials, the director of the Central Museum of Textiles, Krystyna Kondratiuk, approached the Ministry of Culture, a very unusual procedure. A very important event for Abakanowicz and the Polish weavers was a visit to Poland by Pierre Pauli (co-founder of the Biennial, founder and first curator of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Lausanne) and André Künzli (art critic). It was the latter who pronounced that “The tapestry of tomorrow was born in Poland”. They organised a show featuring Polish artists which travelled Europe as a touring exhibition to introduce this new movement.
























