The most expensive work of Magdalena Abakanowicz sold for 13.6 million
For the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz entitled “Bambini”. “Bambini” , which is 83 sculptures depicting silhouettes of children, at Tuesday’s Polswiss Art auction paid 13.6 million. It is also the most expensive work of Magdalena Abakanowicz sold in the world.
“Bambini” is the first work by Magdalena Abakanowicz to be given an unprecedented scale by the artist. Created in late 1998 and early 1999, it was then the most numerous of her headless “crowds” – an iconic series for world contemporary art.
“Bambini” is a work created for the Palais-Royal Garden in Paris, but was first exhibited at the famous “Abakanowicz on the Roof” exhibition on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It has been exhibited many times – in Berlin, Paris, Warsaw (National Opera and Royal Castle), New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Marlborough Gallery, in Poznan, Bad Homburg, Germany, Madrid, Dusseldorf, Milan, in the museum in Oronsko, again in New York’s Marlborough Gallery, in Wroclaw, in Italian Chianti and in Timisoara, Romania.
“Bambini is a monumental work presenting, as one of really few in Abakanowicz’s great output, figures of children. The group of 83 children’s figures forms a coherent whole, the figures have never been dispersed. The “Bambini” group is one of the largest multiform groups Abakanowicz has ever made.
