Conjuror

Prof. Magdalena Abakanowicz was one of the most prominent and influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mrs. Abakanowicz has organised over 100 personal exhibitions in the world, her works are included in the most important collections of museums all over the world (MOMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Pompidou Art Centre, Museum Ludwig, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum and etc.) and open-air expositions (such as Hakone Open Air Museum, Storm King Art Center, Walker Art Center, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and others). The artist has received many honourable awards, she is a doctor of honour of famous word academies of art.

Since she began exhibiting outside Poland in the 1960s, the artist has traveled widely round the world. She has even visited Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Mexico, and has taken part in a great number of international exhibitions. The artist is interested not only in contemporary art, but also in the art of primitive societies. The scale of Abakanowicz’s art is grand, according to art critic Jasia Reichardt, her vision appropriate to nothing less than the creation of new stars and planets.

Michael Brenson writes about Abakanowicz’s importance to the history of modern sculpture and remembers, that, “as soon as I immersed myself in Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work, it was clear to me that one of its most remarkable characteristics was its ability, like the voice of Luciano Pavarotti or Billie Holiday, to carry within it an entire culture. .... Abakanowicz is very Polish, yet she belongs to the world.”

Magdalena Abakanowicz came to the Europos Parkas to introduce her new sculpture and to congratulate Lithuania on the occasion of the millennium of the name of the country. This project was part of national program Vilnius – Cultural Capital of Europe 2009.

Europos Parkas located on the outskirts of Vilnius bears a symbolic meaning for Lithuania by demonstrating the country’s opening for European art and culture after the restoration of the independence. In people’s consciousness the creation of the Europos Parkas museum related to giving an artistic significance to the geographic centre forms the image of Lithuania as a country located in the heart of Europe.

Mr Gintaras Karosas, the founder of the Europos Parkas, says: “Magdalena Abakanowicz is not only one of the brightest creators of modern art, but also a rare exception in the galaxy of the best of the world as she is close to us both geographically and as a representative of a historically close country. Her work, I believe, will properly perpetuate the Millennium of Lithuania and the event Vilnius – European Capital of Culture 2009. Abakanowicz’s sculpture Conjuror could be a metaphor of the phenomenon of the culture of our nation that has been undergoing ordeals of history for a thousand years already, but is still spiritually strong.”