“When I investigate the human, I investigate myself.”

—Magdalena Abakanowicz

Facing away from the viewer, twenty-one fragmented, hollow bodies sit in eerie rows. Interrogating the dissection and construction of the human body, Magdalena Abakanowicz’s 21 Backs, 1982, are headless and legless, with no individual characteristics. A profound example of the artist’s burlap figures begun in the mid-1970s, the present work reflects the artist’s preoccupation with universal themes of isolationism, community, and the essence of humanity. Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1984, 21 Backs was the first major work to enter an American private collection. Similar examples to 21 Backs are held in the esteemed collections of the Tate, London, and the National Museum in Wrocław in the artist’s native Poland.

21 Backs at once references and diverts from Abakanowicz’s own experiences. Having lived in Poland during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, the artist’s formative years were marred by political turmoil. Trapped between the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and the front lines of World War II, Abakanowicz’s family was forced to flee their home. At age 14, the artist volunteered as a nurse in a makeshift hospital where she witnessed many atrocities of war, including severed appendages and amputated limbs—references for her “hollow,” anonymous figures which feature prominently in her practice.

To create these figures, the artist would often take the mold of those around her, using these molds to press layers of resin-dipped burlap into. This method perhaps recalls the time when as a child, Abakanowicz made objects out of sticks and mud on her family’s property in Poland. In these more mature works, there is an almost earthlike quality to the sculptures.ⁱ Though each figure is uniquely imprinted, other defining or anatomical characteristics are eliminated, resulting in anonymous, headless and legless torsos. In doing so, Abakanowicz reduces the human form to its essence.

“People who saw the Backs would ask me ‘Is it Auschwitz?'. 'Is it a religious rite in Peru?', 'Is it a dance of Ramayana?’. And I could answer all of those questions yes, because it is all of these.”

—Magdalena Abakanowicz

Abakanowicz’s burlap figures first appeared in the mid-1970s. The Backs “seem to be stripped of the protective layers of skin and tragically affected by time and history. Their colorless, hunched, and lacerated surfaces evoke anguish and torment and emerge as metaphors for subjugated and violated humanity. Placed directly on the floor and arranged together in row after row, these figures bring to mind prisoners or victims of concentration camps. But they also seem to be engaged in devotional prayer, as if participating in a sacred ritual. The ceremonial quality of the Backs is enhanced by their mysterious hollow interiors and by the anonymity of the individual figures. These assemblies of empty and decapitated bodies evoke human sacrifice, unknown solemn offerings, or a cemetery full of old gravestones.”ⁱⁱ

ⁱ Martin Z. Margulies, Katherine Hinds and Michael Danoff, The Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Vol. 2, Lombardia, 2018, p. 329.

ⁱⁱ Joanna Inglot, ”Figures, Environments, and Rituals: Abakanowicz and the Polish Sculptural Discourse of the 1970s and 1980s,” in The Figurative Sculpture of Magdalena Abakanowicz: Bodies, Environments, and Myths, Joanna Inglot, Berkeley, 2004, p. 82.