Magdelana Abakanowicz was born in 1930 near Falenty, Poland. Between 1950 and 1954, she studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and sought to escape from the conventional art forms through weaving. As an artist, Abakanowicz has gone through many significant artistic changes. From 1954-1960, she painted a series of large gouaches on paper and canvas. She described that feeling, "My medium will be a part of my self and painting is just a forerunner of my future." During the 1960's Abakanowicz began creating monumental three-dimensional forms called Abakans, made out of materials woven by herself in her own technique. During the 70's she created huge cycles of figurative and non-figurative sculptures made out of burlap and resins called Alterations. It was during the '80s that Abakanowicz created sculptures in bronze, wood, steel, ceramic, and burlap. She creates a series of monumental sculptures using bronze, stone, wood, and iron. Installs permanent outdoor "spaces to experience" in Italy, Israel, S. Korea, Germany, and America.
             Her main subjects are human and animal figures presented in large groups of 50, 80, or 150 exemplars. Abakanowicz also works in drawing, painting, choreographing dances, and architectural projects. Her work can be seen in museums all over the world. Often in her work, she explores the alerted reality created by the groups of sculpture in a gallery while also drawing heavily upon her personal and family history. Abakanowicz's work demonstrates an evolution from themes to dwellings, to humans, to the primality of organic growth itself. Abakanowicz's strong idealism and forceful speaking style suggest a productive tenacity born of a defensive self-belief. She feels "overawed by the quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, b...