Alina Szapocznikow
Alina Szapocznikow ( ) (born May 16, 1926 in Kalisz , Poland ; † March 2, 1973 in Passy , France ) was a Polish sculptor and graphic artist.
Life
Coming from a Jewish family of doctors, she was imprisoned during the Second World War in the ghettos of Pabianice and Litzmannstadt ( Łódź ), then in the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau , Bergen-Belsen and in the Theresienstadt ghetto .
After the end of the war, she first studied sculpture in Prague from 1946 to 1947 , initially in Otakar Velímský's studio, then in the Prague School of Design . Thanks to a scholarship, she was able to continue her studies from 1947–1950 at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris , but had to drop out due to a serious illness and return to Poland.
In 1963 she came again, and now for good, to Paris, where she contracted breast cancer in 1969 and finally died in 1973 in the Praz-Coutant sanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie) .
She was the wife of the Polish art historian Ryszard Stanisławski, her son Piotr lives in France. After her divorce from Stanisławski, she married the Polish graphic artist Roman Cieślewicz , with whom she remained married until death.
Alina Szapocznikow's grave is in the Montparnasse Cemetery , Division 9, 7ième ligne sud, 11 est in Paris.
Creating art
During her stay in Poland she created expressive figurative sculptures. In Paris she began to experiment with colored casts of her own body in polyester and polyurethane . In the last years of her life, her work was overshadowed by the approaching death. The casts of her body were supposed to hold on to the fading life for eternity.
Her assemblage "Goldfinger", selected by world-famous artists such as Marcel Duchamp , Jean Arp , Max Ernst and Roberto Matta , was awarded the Copley Foundation Prize in 1965.
Szapocznikow's works were exhibited at Documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007 and can also be found among others. a. in the collections of MOMA in New York , the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles , the Center Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London .
The artist's work has been the subject of several documentary films, most notably a video documentation by the Polish director Krzysztof Tchórzewski recorded just a few days after her death in her studio in Malakoff near Paris, followed by the 1975 documentary Ślad (Eng. The Trace) by the Polish Director Hanna Włodarczyk. In 1998, the 48-minute documentary In articulo mortis was made, again directed by Krzysztof Tchórzewskis . Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973) .
Web links
- Materials by and about Alina Szapocznikow in the documenta archive
- Alina Szapocznikow on culture.pl (English)
- Alina Szapocznikow on Flickr
- Gazeta Wyborcza (Polish)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Szapocznikow, Alina |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish sculptor and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 16, 1926 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kalisz |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 2nd 1973 |
| Place of death | Praz-Coutant France |