Red Abacan

Mediums: dyed textiles.
Location: The National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm (Sweden).

The artist’s early experience in creating fabric sculptures gave art criticism a new term – “abakan”, formed from the name of its author, Abakanowicz. She was attracted by the combination of softness of freely draped natural coarse fiber and textured properties of sisal (a type of thread obtained from the leaves of Agava sisolana). The artist gave the product intense colours that are not characteristic of this natural material. Abakans were displayed suspended from a rack or ceiling, striking the viewer with a multiply enlarged organic structure and the fact that the author easily imitated the surface of both the earth and the human body. For such work, she received the Grand Prix at the International Biennale in São Paulo.