The Raszyn Cultural Centre invites you to an exhibition dedicated to Magdalena Abakanowicz.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, one of Poland's and the world's best-known contemporary sculptors, was born in Falenty on 20 June 1930. In June, for a few weeks, the Raszyn Austeria will be transformed into a gallery of modern art. The great artist's birthday will be celebrated this year with an exhibition of her sculptures in the new interiors of the Austeria. Residents and tourists will have the opportunity to see for themselves selected works from the collection of the Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz Kosmowska and Jan Kosmowski Foundation, which have been exhibited all over the world. Abakanowicz's sculptures can be found in almost a hundred of the most important museums and collections, and at auctions they fetch record prices for Polish contemporary art.

She became famous for the spatial textiles she created in the mid-1960s, named 'abakans' after her. Their original, colourful, large-scale forms raised questions: what are they - fabric or sculpture? What do they represent? How to view them? These works also intrigue contemporary viewers. In the following decades, Magdalena Abakanowicz created 'crowds' - repetitive, headless figures with a fibrous, organic texture, which she presented both in galleries and in urban spaces. The horrors of war in Ukraine brought the world's attention once again to Abakanowicz's expressive sculptures, in which the artist incorporated memories of the Second World War and Stalinism. Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in Falenty, where her father, a former military officer, had managed the agricultural estate "Falenty Wielkie", owned by Zofia Światopełk-Czetwertyńska, for several years.

After the death of Magdalena's grandfather, the family bought, with funds from her mother's dowry, a house in Krępa near Garwolin and moved out of Falenty. However, the memory of this place always remained in the artist's memory and she kept returning to it. The house - a former manor outbuilding, the so-called Government House - where the Abakanowicz family lived has been preserved to this day. This building is now entered in the register of historical monuments. For several years, the Social Committee for the Protection of Falenty has been organising the 'Magdalena Abakanowicz's Birthday in Falenty' event. This year, the Raszyn Cultural Centre, together with the SKOF, invites you to a birthday cake on 14 June at 18:00 and the official opening of the vernissage of the exhibition "ABAKANOWICZ. From Here" at the Centre for Social and Cultural Integration, the so-called New Gallery. The exhibition will be on display until the end of July this year.