Series S.05 — A vocabulary of forms

The large woods

Monumental wood · 1968–1971

Before the discs and before the bronze, the wood: between 1968 and 1971 Antonina builds her largest works — multi-element compositions, figures tall as people standing together, like a crowd. Mahogany, walnut, oak: whole trunks and boards, hollowed until the light passes through.

They are works made to stand in the open and to stand in a group: they are born in parks and at symposia, and they still move today — from one museum to another, from one installation to the next — without losing their nature as an ensemble.

02

The group and the scene

Each exhibition, a new installation

A multi-element work has no fixed pose: the figures are arranged anew at every exhibition, and the arrangement belongs to the installation, not to the work.

Wygnanie lives today at the Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej in Orońsko, and returned to the stage in 2021 at the «Wspomnienie» exhibition of the Muzeum Regionalne in Siedlce, where the large woods had a whole room.

  • The wooden figures of Wygnanie arranged in the room on a pale dais, the carved feet among the figures

    Wygnanie installed at the «Wspomnienie» exhibition, Siedlce 2021.

    Photograph from the family archive

  • A museum room with parquet and four tall carved wooden steles in a row, small gilded bronzes on plinths to the right

    The room of the woods at the same exhibition: four steles in a row on the parquet.

    Photograph from the family archive