Body 81F

Magdalena Abakanowicz

1981

A large charcoal on paper portraying a vertical, hollowed torso in which Abakanowicz confronts bodily vulnerability and the anonymity of human presence.

Your eye is grabbed by a dense, dark vertical core of layered strokes and ghostly white highlights that read like ribs and internal organs, producing a tactile, tense sense of a body both present and eroding.

This drawing brings the artist’s sculptural concerns—texture, absence, and the collective human figure—into two dimensions, helping to shape late‑20th‑century explorations that blurred drawing, textile, and the politics of the body.

Palette

Art Terms

Charcoal Drawing Figurative Figure/ground relationship Gestural Investigating identity Contemporary art

Exhibitions

Wall Hangings

1969

Sculpture from the Collection

1972

Sculptors' Drawings

1986

New Acquisitions: Lachaise Torso; Prints

1934