Objects

In 1962, Alina Szapocznikow created “Samogłoska” [“Vowel”] in 1962, shaped into the letter “U” from a block of sandstone, filling the gap with a form cast in bronze. “Vowel” (like “Consonant” from the same year) is one of the sculptures in which the artist experimented with non-traditional sculpture materials, including cement and the embedding of bronze into the stone’s structure.

In “Vowel”, the artist observes the organic, nature-altered form of stone, leaves developing cracks and edges untouched and experiments with both form and material - shaping her own, unique sculptural language. This work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and is included in the catalogue of all her sculptural works (Jola Gola, “Catalogue of Sculptures by Alina Szapocznikow”, Kraków 2001, cat. no. 220).

Alina Szapocznikow was born on 16 May 1926, in Kalisz, and died on 2 March 1973, in Passy, France. Before the war, she lived in Pabianice. Between 1940 and 1942, with her mother (her father died in 1938), she was confined in the ghetto there. She was then transferred to the Łódź ghetto and (through Auschwitz) successively to the Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt camps.

After the war, she studied art in Prague and in France. In the early 1950s, she returned to Poland and continued her sculpture work. However, in 1963, she moved to Paris, where she settled permanently.

Szapocznikow was one of the most original contemporary sculptors. Drawing on her personal experience of a long struggle with an incurable illness, she developed her own language of forms to reflect the transformations of the human body. To achieve this, she introduced new materials into her sculptor’s toolkit, which she used boldly and effectively - creating deeply moving, intimate works with a rare power of expression.

In her diverse body of work, Szapocznikow always remained true to herself. In art history, she is remembered as one of the pioneers of modern women’s art.

Renata Piątkowska