The author of the concept for the Contemporary Trends. Paintings from the Collections of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven exhibition, and its initiator, was Edy de Wilde (1919–2005). The opinions of this charismatic museologist left their mark on the character of the whole exhibition. De Wilde was the director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (1946–1963) and then of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1963–1985). Therefore, he presented works which he mostly bought for the museum collections himself.

Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw between 1950 and 1954. She initially engaged in painting; however, she quickly gave up the medium in favour of textiles. Her first individual exhibition took place in 1960 at Kordegarda in Warsaw. Two years later, she showed her works at the Biennial in Lausanne, which influenced the crystallisation of the Polish school of textiles.