Human Landscapes was the first UK retrospective of the work of the much-overlooked Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973).
Szapocznikow’s career was cut short by her premature death at the age 47, but her work has been reappraised internationally in the last decade.
This exhibition highlighted how the artist’s work developed from classically figurative sculptures to her later ‘awkward objects’, which are politically charged and overlaid with Surrealist and Pop Art influences.
The exhibition featured more than 100 works created between 1956 and 1972 including drawings, photography and sculpture, incorporating Szapocznikow’s characteristic use of cast body parts, many of which she transformed into everyday objects like lamps or ashtrays.
Szapocznikow radically re-conceptualised sculpture, as an imprint not only of memory but also of her own body, related to her traumatic experiences during the Second World War as a Polish Jew, imprisoned for over 10 months in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps.
Alina Szpocznikow: timeline
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Head ashtrays and pin-up body parts – Alina Szapocznikow: Human Landscapes review
***** The Guardian
This revelatory survey of a long-overlooked artist is full of wonders and horrors – from the pouting lip lamps to her cast of her son made just before her untimely death
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Body shock: the intense art and anguish of sculptor Alina Szapocznikow
Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian
Now the time has finally come for this singular artist, for her conviction that “of all the manifestations of the ephemeral the human body is the most vulnerable, the only source of all joy, all suffering and all truth”.
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Body of Work
Yorkshire Post on Alina Szapocznikow
The Hepworth Wakefield never disappoints – each show seems to surpass the last – but even by its own very high standards its latest exhibition is quite a coup.
Yvette Huddleston, Yorkshire Post
Read MoreThis exhibition is supported by
Alina Szapocznikow: Human Landscapes is co-curated with Marta Dziewańska, Head of Research and Public Programs, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris and the Estate of Alina Szapocznikow
Arnold Burton Charitable Trust
Henry Moore Foundation
The John S Cohen Foundation
Polish Cultural Institute
Midge and Simon Palley
Bianca and Stuart Roden
A private collector from Warsaw
Exhibition Partner:
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Exhibition Design:
vPPR Architects
Exhibition Graphics:
Twelve
Logistics Partner:
Mtec
