Magdalena Więcek

Magdalena Więcek (1924, Katowice - 2008) was a sculptor, draughtswoman and teacher, whose varied work illustrates the important transformations in 20th-century Polish sculpture. She studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Sopot (from 1945, under Marian Wnuk) and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1949-52, diploma under Wnuk and Franciszek Strynkiewicz). After a Socialist-Realist debut she turned towards expressive forms and deformation - foreshadowed by the exhibition „Against War, Against Fascism” at the Arsenał (1955) - and in 1959 she showed groundbreaking, deformed sculptures at a joint exhibition with Stefan Gierowski and Marian Bogusz at the Krzywe Koło Gallery.

Więcek's key works of the 1960s are massive forms close to living organisms - a kind of „monuments to the power of nature”, calling to mind the sculptures of Alina Szapocznikow or Henry Moore. In contrast to them she created light and openwork forms, suggesting movement, which seem to float in the air, losing their massiveness and their connection with the base (the cycles „Florale”, „Close to the Earth”). She worked in many materials - most readily in metal, which, it was said, „was her element”, combining it with concrete and stone.

With realisations created, among others, during two editions of the Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg (1965, 1967) and in Aalborg, Więcek gave sculpture a new place in urban space, placing the emphasis on its relations with its surroundings. She taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań (1966-82), and her work - alongside the achievements of Szapocznikow or Alina Ślesińska - was recalled by the large exhibition „An Action on the Eye” at the Zachęta in Warsaw.