Magdalena Abakanowicz Quotes & Sayings

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm. — Magdalena Abakanowicz

Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine. — Magdalena Abakanowicz

Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind. — Magdalena Abakanowicz

It is easy to follow, but it is uninteresting to do easy things. We find out about ourselves only when we take risks, when we challenge and question. — Magdalena Abakanowicz

My work comes from the experience of crowds, injustice, and aggression ... I feel an affinity for art when it was made a form of existence, like when shamans worked in the territory between men and unknown powers ... I try to bewitch the crowd. — Magdalena Abakanowicz