Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz was a force of gravity ? wrote art historian Barbara Rose
in 1984. Indeed and we feel it as she lays out her mission: from early ruptures with tapestry
tradition to the invention of her signature woven work - Ab akans - to those of human form to
public projects responsive to the history and particularities of place to her vision for an
Arboreal Architecture sympathetic to living in concert with the earth and kind to the climate.
This first compendium of the artist's writings throughout her career demonstrates her need to
communicate beyond her Warsaw studio with spirited vitality and urgency. It serves as a
companion to her profoundly moving autobiography Fate and Art (Skira second edition 2020)
whose first iteration we find here Portrait x 20? begun in 1978. Included too from that same
year is a little-known lecture to artists assembled for a conference in the Bay Area. She
speaks intimately of the aesthetic and social agenda that drove her making: It is only with
friends that I discuss problems that I have and to which I attach importance. I have come to
discuss them with you.? And here is her prose poem Soft ? of 1979 that anticipated her entry
for the Polish Pavilion in the 1980 Venice Biennale catapulting her onto the international
scene. Ten interviews span 30 years including Rose's never-before-published conversation
conducted from the late '80s to early '90s. With correspondence among twenty persons formative
in her career - and she in their lives - this volume will be an essential sourcebook for
scholars. Yet by bringing archives to life this book will prove a fascinating read for others
in and out of the art world able to enter into the soul of an artist so perceptive of her
times and so capable of marshalling of the power of art to speak of wider human concerns. This
is evoked in the introductory essay by historian Joanna Bourke whose reflection helps bring
forward the meaning of Abakanowicz's art today.
