The Humming Birds 2
Artist: Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish, 1930-2017)
Date: 1970/1974
Dimensions:
48 × 34 × 5 in. (121.9 × 86.4 × 12.7 cm)
Medium: Sisal and hemp
Classification: Textiles and Fiber
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, by exchange
Object number: 2011.6
Label Text:
Magdalena Abakanowicz (pronounced abba-ka-NO-vich) is a Polish artist whose sculptural work has been influenced by her early life in Warsaw under the regimes of the Nazis during World War II and subsequently the Communists. Although she was a trained artist, the government of Poland in the 1950s only allotted her a space of 10 x 13 feet to both live and work. She turned to fiber arts stating:
“I could not pick up stone or marble and go to a foundry because there was no stone, no marble and no foundry to cast it. This absence brought me to what they call the ‘world of fiber.’ It never would have happened if everyday life had been different. I needed to build something around me like a fence, to shut out the unpleasantness.”
The companion piece, The Humming Bird 1, is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Magdalena Abakanowicz (pronounced abba-ka-NO-vich) is a Polish artist whose sculptural work has been influenced by her early life in Warsaw under the regimes of the Nazis during World War II and subsequently the Communists. Although she was a trained artist, the government of Poland in the 1950s only allotted her a space of 10 x 13 feet to both live and work. She turned to fiber arts stating:
“I could not pick up stone or marble and go to a foundry because there was no stone, no marble and no foundry to cast it. This absence brought me to what they call the ‘world of fiber.’ It never would have happened if everyday life had been different. I needed to build something around me like a fence, to shut out the unpleasantness.”
The companion piece, The Humming Bird 1, is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
DescriptionPlain weave with discontinuous wefts and with supplementary pile wefts forming cut and uncut pile and additional warps knotted into weave, plied and wrapped.
Not on view
In Collection(s)