Magdalena Abakanowicz
Faces, 1984
lithograph, 75,5 × 56,5 cm
Magdalena Abakanowicz has always dedicated herself to sculpture, after a very early period of pictorial research. Her plastic work initially took the form of non-canonical materials, for example materials woven according to a technique invented by her, or, during the Seventies, plaster structures onto which pieces of jute or hemp. In more recent years, wood, terracotta and different metals have also been adopted, while stone or bronze casting progressively enter its operational horizon. Usually, Abakanovicz's work takes on the dimension of the installation of large elements, often designed for the outdoors. The figures are almost always large in size and have an anthropomorphic structure. The sculptor's work is in fact a meditation on the human condition, and the use of rough materials, devoid of colour, clearly bearing the imprints of the manual skill that generated them, insist on the organic, corporeal and physical values that are intended to be in the foreground. Even in the portrait sketched in the drawing in the collection, evidently a sketch for a sculpture, these values emerge, in the dense and nervous outline of black signs which with strong vertical and diagonal strokes, contrasted by the horizontal ones which define the eyes and mouth, structure with decision the image.
from: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro. La Collezione permanente, exhibition catalogue, edited by G. Verzotti, A. Vettese, Milano, Skira, 2007, p. 173.
