Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in Poland in 1930. Her childhood was profoundly influenced by the terrible events of World War II. She began her artistic career as a painter but soon turned to weaving. Financially constricted, Abakanowicz was forced to work with sisal ropes collected from the harbor, sparking an exploration of natural and found materials, such as sackcloth. Her monumental sculptural pieces helped to reshape the boundaries of fiber arts in the early 1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Abakanowicz, continuing with the aesthetics of the human figure, further expanded her range of materials to include iron, bronze, stone, and tree trunk. An acclaimed outdoor public artist, Abakanowicz, in 2006, installed 106 cast iron figures throughout Chicago's Grant Park.