Every Tangle of Thread and Rope traces Magdalena Abakanowicz’s development as a textile artist from the mid 1950s until the late century, beginning with designs for tapestries and jacquard punched cards for weaving, rows of leaf-shapes, colourways and tryouts for decorative fabrics, but soon expands, as did her art, into sculpture and installation art.
Born in 1930 to an aristocratic family, Abakanowicz spent her childhood in the forests and fields of her family’s country estate, and witnessed the horrors of war in her teens. At 12, she saw her mother’s arm severed by gunfire. The memory returns in a delicate, understated clenched fist, made from sisal in 1975. Becoming an art student in postwar communist Poland, Abakanowicz followed her own path, negotiating the political, cultural and aesthetic strictures of the party line, and managed to have an international career, even at times when she didn’t know if she would be allowed a passport until hours before she travelled.
