AGNES GUND Founding Trustee Agnes Gund Foundation President Emerita The Museum of Modern Art, New York
I remember vividly Magdalena’s show at Marlborough over twenty years ago and seeing the works from War Games. I was struck by these monumental structures of massive tree trucks that had their bark and branches removed. They were wrapped with cloth, as though they were wounded and placed on metal lattice pedestals. To me, it was such a profound statement on our relationship to war, to what must have been the artist’s experience living in Soviet-occupied Poland, to how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the natural world. I was very happy to help bring Winged Trunk (1989) from the War Games series into MoMA. I was familiar with Magdalena’s work from the 1970s which began her preoccupation with using the human body as her chief subject. Magdalena’s textile sculptures are so distinctly unique, and I knew earlier works already in the collection like Yellow Abakan (1967-68), Pregnant (1981-82), and a number of remarkable drawings. It was so kind of Magdalena to give the drawings Birth of Fly (1994-97) and Cecyna Flower (1991) to the Museum in 2002 in my honor. Magdalena’s fifty-plus year career has been a terrific journey and what an oeuvre and a legacy she has created, with no signs of slowing down, as her recent show at Richard Gray Gallery just a few years ago can attest! I wish Magdalena a happy and joyous eighty-fifth birthday and send all my very best wishes.
57. From left: Yellow Abakan (1967-68), Winged Trunk (1989), and Pregnant (1981-82), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015 62