Cage

This artist, resident in Poland, revolutionised textile art in the 1960s with her monumental three-dimensional draperies called Abakans. Since the early 1970s she has produced sculptures out of burlap and gauze. One of her best-known series is Backs, arranged independently or in a group. Earlier, she seated her figures directly on the ground; later, she placed them on a stretcher-like low wooden stand. This Cage was produced in 1986; a version created five years earlier is in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Her torsos, produced from plaster casts and made of burlap reinforced with synthetic resin, give a precise diagnosis of the general physical and spiritual condition of humankind.

Ferenc Tóth