Drawing on the work of prominent art historians, curators, critics, and collectors, this exhibition catalogue presents the most current research on the work of Alina Szapocznikow.

Born in Kalisz, Poland, in 1926, Szapocznikow studied in Prague and Paris, spent the last decade of her life in France, and created an impressive number of sculptures and drawings that are now defined as post-surrealist and proto-feminist. Recent exhibitions of the artist’s work in Germany and France, along with acquisitions by prominent collections worldwide, have bolstered Szapocznikow’s international reputation and ignited discussion of her significance to twentieth-century art.

Agata Jakubowska, Joanna Mytkowska—Introduction

I. ALINA SZAPOCZNIKOW—WORKS AND INTERPRETATIONS

ESSAYS

Marta Dziewańska, Awkward Objects: Creative Barbarity—On Awkward Beginnings
Jola Gola, L’Oeil de Boeuf—Finding the Key to the Works of Alina Szapocznikow
Griselda Pollock, Too Early and Too Late: Melting Solids and Traumatic Encryption in the Sculptural Dissolutions of Alina Szapocznikow
Anda Rottenberg, Personalizations
Ernst van Alphen, Sheer Skin: The Dissolution of Sculptural Skin and Sculpted Skin
Agata Jakubowska, Alina Szapocznikow’s Leg and Goldfinger: Between Reality and Illusion
Manuela Ammer, “My American Dream”: Alina Szapocznikow’s Take on Conceptual Art
Anke Kempkes, Black Drips and Dark Matter—The Luxury Gap—Concept Individuel—Quarry Desert. The Incommensurable Contemporaneity of Alina Szapocznikow
Paweł Leszkowicz, Alina Szapocznikow’s Piotr or “The Flesh of My Son”
Sarah Wilson, Alina Szapocznikow in Paris: Worlds in Action and in Retrospect

II. ALINA SZAPOCZNIKOW—FROM THE ARCHIVES

Tomáš Pospíszyl, Alena Šapočniková in Prague

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ARCHIVE OF ALINA SZAPOCZNIKOW

Alina Szapocznikow: A Biography
Contributors
List of Works and Photo Credits