Puellae (Girls)

1992

Magdalena Abakanowicz

Sculptor, Polish, 1930 - 2017

Twenty-one, free-standing, bronze sculptures of headless people are arranged under the green canopies of trees in this horizontal photograph. The earth-brown surfaces of the sculptures are rough. In this view, they cluster together at various distances from each other, and the bodies of all are angled to our right. They stand erect with their legs together and arms pressed tightly along their sides. From this angle, one person is positioned farther from the rest, to our left. Each person stands on a square base that sits on the ground, which appears to be fine mulch or pine needles. Six trees are spaced around the group, and together their canopies fill the top third of this photograph. Beyond the trees is a low, green hedge that encloses the whole group. Sunlight illuminates the front, right-hand surfaces of the sculptures.
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The sculpture of Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz is largely drawn from her experience of World War II and its aftermath. She is best known for her "crowds" (as she calls them) of headless, rigidly posed figures whose anonymity and multiplicity have been regarded as the artist's personal response to totalitarianism.

Each of the thirty bronzes in Puellae (meaning "girls" in Latin) is unique, made from individually sculpted wax forms based on a body cast of a single child model. Abakanowicz applied burlap to each of the forms prior to casting to give them a rough, organic texture. This work refers to an account the artist heard while growing up in Poland about a group of children who froze to death as they were transported in cattle cars from Poland to Germany during the war.

Sculpture Garden, Northeast Quadrant
On View

Sculpture Garden, Northeast Quadrant

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing and looking at us with her head tilted a little to our left in this vertical portrait painting. She has pale skin, a heart-shaped face with rosy cheeks, and a rose-pink bow mouth. Thin, arched, sable-brown eyebrows frame her gray eyes. A wreath of pale pink flowers and curling white ostrich feathers crowns her long gray hair, which is piled high on her head. Loose curly tendrils brush both shoulders. Her glowing, silver satin gown is trimmed with delicate sheer lace around the wide, plunging neckline and sleeves, and has a pink sash around her narrow waist. Pearl bracelets adorn her wrists. She leans to her left, our right, to rest her left elbow against a waist-high, cinnamon-brown stone pedestal, which is decorated with a bronze-colored garland and bow on the side facing us. A ring of blue, yellow, red, and pink flowers, woven with strands of ivy, dangles in the hand resting on the pedestal. Her right hand hangs loosely by her side. Along the left edge of the dimly lit background, a tree with a thick trunk angles into the upper left corner. A smaller sapling grows just in front of it. On the right, bushes with olive and fern-green leaves dotted with lilac-purple flecks rise above the pedestal. Dark clouds fill most of the top third of the canvas but they part around her head to reveal the soft blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in white in the lower right corner, “L. Vigée Le Brun 1782.”

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Marlborough Gallery, Inc., New York); purchased 1 February 1999 by NGA.

Associated Names

Bibliography

2013

  • Cigola, Francesca. Art Parks: A Tour of America’s Sculpture Parks and Gardens. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013: 101.

Inscriptions

on rear, the artist's symbol, with the date

Wikidata ID

Q63861949

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