Szapocznikow. Personal

An intimate, deliberately close display of sculpture by Alina Szapocznikow - one of the most important artists of Poland’s post-war avant-garde. The exhibition builds an almost bodily closeness between the viewer and works whose constant centre is the human body.

The National Museum in Krakow on the exhibition:

The brutal forms of Alina Szapocznikow’s works - torn, deformed silhouettes - and the naturalism of her polyester casts are marked by strong expression.

The sculptor, however, began with a style proper to Socialist Realism, interpreting it entirely in her own way. In time she moved far from the Socialist Realist convention. Through her work she processed the painful memory of the war years - she was a teenage prisoner of concentration camps and lost members of her family in the Holocaust. In 1969 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and from then on she referred to her illness directly and honestly, in a bold way unprecedented in art. Despite these dramatic experiences, in her works she sought to emphasise the sensual and erotic aspects of human existence. At the centre of Alina Szapocznikow’s art remains the body, a carrier of both dramatic histories and sensual pleasure.

What to expect

The small exhibition space is conceived to allow a genuinely personal encounter with the artist’s sensibility. Although the works cannot be touched, the exhibition is meant to act almost haptically - to create a sense of bodily closeness. You will see torn, deformed silhouettes and naturalistic polyester casts in which the face and body - the artist’s own and others’ - become a record of a whole spectrum of emotion.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the National Museum in Krakow website.

Museum profile: National Museum in Krakow - Main Building.