The Directors of Marlborough are pleased to present a spotlight show of works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, to coincide with a major retrospective opening at Tate Modern. On this occasion Marlborough celebrates over 25 years of close collaboration, during which the Gallery presented 20 solo exhibitions of the Polish artist and produced numerous publications.

Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in 1930 in Poland, and her artistic practice has been influenced by the experience of the Second World War and subsequent Soviet occupation. During her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Abakanowicz was discouraged from pursuing painting and redirected towards weaving, deemed more utilitarian and appropriate for female artists. Continuing to work with fabric, the artist found international success in the 1960s, when her three-dimensional tapestries were exhibited at the Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne, and, in 1965, won her the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennial. The 1969 exhibition Wall Hangings at MoMA, NY further cemented her position as a major artist.

While Abakanowicz is usually referred to as ‘textile artist’, her roughly-woven wall hangings created from wool, sisal, rope and horse hair, can be considered the predecessors of installation art.

‘You can call her works tapestries, but what she was creating, above all, were experiential environments.’

– Ann Coxon, Curator, Tate Modern

Magdalena Abakanowicz had over 150 solo exhibitions in Europe, North and South America, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. She has exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Her works are included in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum, National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul, Hiroshima Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas among others.