The body that speaks by Alina Szapocznikow

Grenoble (Isère). “Disturbing, baroque, existential, shapeless and erotic, the work of Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow has long been misunderstood, escaping any classification,” says Sophie Bernard, chief curator and curator of the retrospective comprising 150 works presented at the Grenoble Museum [en partenariat avec le Kunstmuseum Ravensburg en Allemagne]. However, one could object that this indetermination characterizes many creators who resist the labels that art history seeks to distribute. However, visitors who take this somewhat winding route must face the facts: the aesthetic nomadism of Alina Szapocznikow (1926, Kalisz, Poland-1973, Passy, ​​Haute-Savoie) is astonishing.

Stylistically, she crosses classicism as well as expressionism, surrealism as well as New Realism, to the point of flirting with pop art. On a technical level, she practices both direct cutting and bronze casting, molding and imprinting, working indifferently with plaster, marble, polyester resin and even polyurethane foam. Despite this eclecticism, a theme, which gives its title to the exhibition, irrigates the entire work: the body. But these bodies, with the exception of the first years of Szapocznikow, evoked through the Monument for Soviet-Polish friendship (1954) or Difficult age (1956), depart clearly from tradition. An observation is immediately obvious: it is no longer a question of resemblance or perfection, but of a subjective expression, of a vision which is affirmed through forms reduced to the essential. The human figure is no longer master of the world: it suffers from it. Like those of the sculptor Germaine Richier, whom she knew in Paris, or Alberto Giacometti, her figures lose the smooth envelope in which the flesh was protected, to appear as a jagged, indeterminate material (The one who climbs1959). The interior and surface of the body then become a field of experimentation.

Very quickly, Szapocznikow focuses almost exclusively on the female body, which she fragments to retain only the parts deemed erotic. “My gesture, she writes, is addressed to the human body, this total erogenous zone, to its most vague and ephemeral sensations” (words included in the catalogue). Or even archaic sensations, if we think of the expression used by Freud, “polymorphic perversion”, by which he designates the capacity of the newborn to enjoy his entire body. These fragments, declined endlessly, become the artist’s signature. Should this be seen as a form of feminist declaration? Szapocznikow does not comment on this point.

Even more surprising is his silence regarding the tragic period of his adolescence. Jewish, she was interned in several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, ending up in Theresienstadt, from where she was liberated in 1945. Can we see in the importance she gives to eroticism a revenge on life in relation to this painful past? Even if this aspect is not explicitly demonstrated, it is impossible here to completely separate the plastic work from the destiny of its creator.

Hybrid bodies

In the mid-1950s, after the death of Stalin (1953), the thaw in Poland allowed Szapocznikow to free himself from the constraints of socialist realism. But it was above all her stays in Paris – where she settled permanently in 1963 and met César as well as the artists of New Realism – which considerably enriched her vocabulary. She practices direct molding of her own body, as evidenced by the imposing Noga (“leg”, 1962), presented in Grenoble in two versions, one in plaster, more crude, the other in bronze, refined. Next come abstract works (Developed1964) as well as hybrid bodies, where human figures and mechanical elements intertwine (Man with instrument1963). It is moreover Machine in flesh (1963), a striking combination of cement, plastic and iron, which welcomes the visitor at the entrance to the exhibition.

A singular chapter is that of its foray into design with the “Lampes bouche”. These pastel-colored luminous sculptures, molded from his own mouth or that of his loved ones, constitute separate works, both playful and strange. Then, Szapocznikow was overtaken by destiny. During her series “Tumors” (1962) – composed of photographs, crumpled paper and gauze covered with transparent polyester resin – she was diagnosed with breast cancer. His latest creations, the “Fétiches”, tinged with black humor, appear as a desire to exorcise the threat of death (Green rag breast1970-1971). These soft sculptures, like the withering body, find their culmination in a macabre work presented at the end of the tour: Alina’s Funeral (1970).

The viewer can, however, cheer up with the least known part of this work: the graphic works, formidable drawings, sometimes abstract, sometimes preparatory sketches for the sculptures to come.