Renowned sculptor

Born: June 20, 1930

Died April 20, 2017

MAGDALENA Abakanowicz, who has died aged 86, was a renowned sculptor known for large abstract forms, sometimes in dyed textile, and sometimes in rippled metal, as in one of her famous works Backs, which was made up of rows of headless figures bent over as if in prayer. She also attracted attention for wrapping Edinburgh Cathedral in rope for the Edinburgh International Festival in 1972.

Abakanowicz began working in her native Poland but started to attract international attention in the 1960s for her works known as Abakans: pieces of rough fabric suspended from ceilings and, depending on who was looking, roughly resembling shrouds, cocoons or pods. Her art also took on a more directly political edge when she was commissioned to create a work in Hiroshima and produced bronze versions of her backs, bowed and seated in the open air.

Abakanowicz was born near Warsaw and grew up on her father’s estate where she had a carefree childhood until the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The family – who it was said could trace their lineage back to Genghis Khan - was forced to flee and went to live on the country’s Baltic coast where Abakanowicz began her artistic training at the College of Fine Arts in Sopot.

After further training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw after the end of the war, she began her career as a painter before she moved to making three-dimensional pieces from soft fabrics and fibres. That led her to larger, firm sculpture forms built into natural surroundings.

By the mid 1970s, she had developed the imagery for which she is most famous: great headless metal bodies arranged in groups. They have been exhibited around the world, including at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London, which last year began exhibiting Abakanowicz’s Embryology, a group of objects that resemble wombs or cocoons piled together on the floor. In 2010, the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh also exhibited Court of King Arthur, which was made up of large figures resembling griffins and other mythical creatures.

When asked about her work, Abakanowicz said it fascinated her to explore new techniques and develop new forms. She primarily used metal or thick fibres, hardened with synthetic resins. But during her career she also worked with metals, stone and wood.

In 1980, she was chosen to represent Poland at the Venice Biennale, exhibiting 40 of her Backs, and spoke about the meaning of the work. “I was asked by the public: ‘Is it about the concentration camps in Poland?’ ‘Is it a ceremony in old Peru?’ ‘Is it a ritual in Bali?’ To all these questions, I could answer yes because my work is about the general problems of mankind.”

According to Andrzej Szczerski, head of the National Museum in Krakow, Abakanowicz “drew from the human lot of the 20th century, the lot of a man destroyed by the disasters of that century, a man who wants to be born anew."

Magdalena Abakanowicz is survived by her husband.