The Artist Who Was Always Leaving: Alina Szapocznikow’s Warsaw

The Artist Who Was Always Leaving: Alina Szapocznikow’s Warsaw–Paris Double Life

szapocznikow-paris-forum-0428262335.jpg, default, Alina Szapocznikow in her studio, Paris, France, 1967, photo: Władysław Sławny / Forum

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‘Paris has a way of infecting you,’ Alina Szapocznikow once wrote from Warsaw. ‘It burrows deep into a fresh body like a microbe.’ The Polish sculptor knew this better than anyone – because she spent the better part of her life trying to go home.

In January 1949, Alina Szapocznikow wrote in a letter sent from Zakopane to her partner at the time, Ryszard Stanisławski – an art historian, curator, and later director of the Museum of Art in Łódź – while he was staying in Paris: ‘When a young man’ – not a member of the communist Union of Polish Youth or any other kind of activist, as Alina points out – ‘was dancing with me at a dance hall called Morskie Oko and found out I was from Paris, he said, “Well, I’d rather go to Moscow now; there are probably wonderful things there”.’ Stanisławski replied with a hint of mockery that ‘he is certainly a very decent fellow, but I think he would be somewhat disappointed in Moscow if he’s a European. Poles have always preferred Paris, as history tells us. And it has nothing to do with social upheavals.’

A preference for Paris

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A photo from the book 'Kroją mi się piękne sprawy', pictured: Alina Szapocznikow & Ryszard Stanisławski during a trip around France, 1950, photo: courtesy of Piotr Stanisławski / Wydawnictwo Karakter

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Fotografia z książki "Kroją mi się piękne sprawy". Na zdjęciu: Alina Szapocznikow i Ryszard Stanisławski podczas podróży po Francji, 1950., fot. dzięki uprzejmości Piotra Stanisławskiego / Wydawnictwo Karakter

Polish artists indeed had a strong ‘preference for Paris’, although this was often very much linked to social upheavals. The tradition of artists flocking to the French capital dates all the way back to the November Uprising in 1830. Approximately 100 artists were among the wave of people fleeing the country as part of the Great Emigration. In the 19th century, these departures were still mostly politically motivated, but at the same time – precisely for socio-artistic reasons – Paris also became a significant centre for artists, painters and sculptors. It was there, initially in numerous high-quality private schools and later at the national academy, that they had an opportunity to pursue an artistic education that was not available to them in Warsaw or Kraków – or in Munich, which was also home to a large Polish community.

Just before World War I, there was another wave of migration. Between 1890 and 1915, nearly 700 artists arrived in Paris. In the interwar period, set against a completely different political landscape, the city rose to the mythical status of the world capital of art, attracting not only Picasso, Hemingway and Josephine Baker, but also representatives of the Polish avant-garde and a group of students led by Józef Pankiewicz, who, not coincidentally, called themselves the Paris Committee.

Finally, the post-war period. The 21-year-old Alina Szapocznikow travelled to Paris for the first time in November 1947. She had already completed the first stage of her artistic education at the Academy of Arts and Design in Prague. She had also survived ghettos and concentration camps. After the liberation, she ended up in Prague. She spoke reluctantly, if at all, about her wartime experiences. She was optimistic about the future and declared herself a communist – by choice, not by force – much like many Polish artists and intellectuals during the era known as the Velvet Revolution. She didn’t flee to the West like a rat from a sinking ship – there were still three months to go before the communist coup in Czechoslovakia. But Paris was Paris, after all.

Why communist Poland loved France

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A photo from the book 'Kroją mi się piękne sprawy', pictured: Alina Szapocznikow & Ryszard Stanisławski, 1952-1953, photo: courtesy of Olga Stanisławska / Wydawnictwo Karakter

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Fotografia z książki "Kroją mi się piękne sprawy". Portret przy radiu. Na zdjęciu: Alina Szapocznikow i Ryszard Stanisławski, 1952-1953., fot. dzięki uprzejmości Olgi Stanisławskiej / Wydawnictwo Karakter

For a Western, capitalist country, France was viewed quite favourably by the leaders of communist Poland. French culture exerted a particularly dominant influence in Poland during the first Five-Year Plan – it was not until the late 1940s and early 1950s that it began to lose ground to Soviet culture. From the end of the war until the late 1950s, over 850 translations of French books appeared on the Polish market, and more than 60 exhibitions of French art were held. Only the USSR was represented more prominently than France on the Polish cultural scene.

In 1947, the Polish People’s Republic signed a treaty with France on intellectual cooperation – earlier than with its neighbouring Eastern Bloc countries. This was largely due to the immense influence of communist and socialist movements in France. Following the collapse of the Vichy government due to its collaboration with the Nazis during the war, the right wing in France was discredited, and although the Polish regime was generally hostile towards the French government, its propaganda equated the country on the Seine with the left-wing ‘French proletariat’.

Of course, what was exhibited at that time was only a narrow selection of French art – the major Exhibition of Contemporary French Art at Zachęta Gallery in 1952 didn’t feature any of the surrealist works that Tadeusz Kantor had marvelled at in Paris a few years earlier, but primarily French socialist realism and examples of avant-garde work by artists linked to the French Communist Party, such as Picasso.

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The rebuilding of the Old Town Square in Warsaw, 1951, photo: Zbyszko Siemaszko / Forum

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Odbudowa Starego Miasta, na zdjęciu: prace na Rynku Starego Miasta, 1951, fot. Zbyszko Siemaszko/Forum

The exhibition catalogue’s introduction, as well as an extensive article on the subject published in Przegląd Artystyczny, was written by Ryszard Stanisławski, who had returned to Poland a year earlier after spending several years in Paris. With a French Communist Party membership card in his pocket, he was regarded in Poland as an expert on contemporary French art. He owed this reputation to Alina Szapocznikow.

Stanisławski himself might not have been able to recognise the man he’d been several years before. He’d fled communist Poland – a regime that had only just been established after the war – illegally, without any documents. He was, in fact, an anti-communist, though he had little interest in politics. In Paris, he began studying mathematics, while earning money at night doing manual labour at Les Halles. He soon abandoned mathematics and switched to art history. Eventually, he became more interested in politics and began to support communism. His interests and political views evolved under the influence of a sculptor he met by chance.

They met through a mutual friend in one of the ‘Polish canteens’ in the Port-Royal district – places subsidised by the Polish Embassy offering cheap food for the Polish community. Almost the entire cultural scene frequented these places – it was during these dinners that Szapocznikow also met people such as Adam Ważyk and Tadeusz Kantor. Some, however, such as Julia Hartwig, who was working at the Polish Embassy at the time, avoided the Polish canteens because they truly gave customers a taste of Poland – due to the presence of spies.

Soon, Szapocznikow and Stanisławski began spending more time together. They would stroll around the city, and she would tell him about many things, including the latest trends in French art. Eventually they started living together. As he recalled many years later in an interview with Piotr Rypson: ‘She was developing intensely and making strong connections. She was very good at getting to know people. I was impressed by that. I didn’t have any relationships of that nature.’

Carving a life near Père Lachaise Cemetery

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Alina Szapocznikow in her studio, Paris, France, 1972, photo: Maciej Musiał / PAP

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Szapocznikow first arrived in Paris on a scholarship from an art school in Prague – she continued her studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paul Niclausse’s studio, but never completed her degree. She earned money at Lerendu’s stonemasonry workshop near Père Lachaise Cemetery, creating, among other things, a bas-relief for the headstone of violinist Ginette Neveu, who died in a plane crash, and a copy of a Renaissance portrait of King Francis I commissioned by the directors of Chambord Castle. Stanisławski described the way in which Szapocznikow met Gaston Lerendu as follows:

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I think Alina just walked in off the street and asked if he had a little corner where she could carve in stone, saying she had no materials, and so on. He welcomed her very warmly – and then we became friends with him. He was a strange man, who, apart from us, knew only one other Pole, and that was Julian Tuwim! They met in Paris. He talked constantly about Tuwim, he knew he was a great poet.

However, this brief period of stability soon came to an end. In 1948, the first crack appeared in the harmonious Polish-French relations that had prevailed up until then. Szapocznikow, who was applying for a Polish passport at the time, was caught in the line of fire. She was accused of crossing the border illegally under a false name. Professor Niclausse wrote a letter to the court in defence of his student, praising her highly, and the appointed lawyer delivered a passionate speech worthy, as Stanisławski recalled, of Cicero’s orations. Reportedly, some members of the audience were moved to tears, and the case was won.

However, Szapocznikow didn’t enjoy this peace for long. Her experience in Nazi camps had left its mark not only on her mind but also her body. In the summer of 1949, she was diagnosed with ovarian tuberculosis. She survived, but just barely – thanks to an experimental treatment. Szapocznikow was fortunate to be in France at the time – in Poland, she would have had no chance of survival. However, while she spent several months convalescing in a hospital, she began to long for her homeland. It was there, rather than in Paris, that she felt she could truly develop as an artist. She wished to settle there permanently and urged Stanisławski to return with her. Although the French cultural world sympathised with communism to a certain extent, the reality was still that of a free market. Szapocznikow was struggling financially. Though she had recovered from her illness, she continued treatment in a private hospital. The bill was rising.

It turned out, however, that her worries about money were unnecessary. As Stanisławski recalled in his interview with Rypson, a prefecture employee took his letter explaining their difficult situation and requesting a deferral of payment, ‘went off somewhere into the depths of the office,’ and returned a few minutes later to convey the message to them that ‘the French government has agreed to bear all the costs, and you will not have to pay any bills’.

Warsaw gave her a career, Paris gave her ideas

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A photo from the book 'Kroją mi się piękne sprawy', pictured: Alina Szapocznikow & her son Piotr Stanisławski, 1955, photo: courtesy of Piotr Stanisławski / Wydawnictwo Karakter

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Fotografia z książki "Kroją mi się piękne sprawy". Na zdjęciu: Alina Szapocznikow z synem Piotrem Stanisławskim, Warszawa, 1955., fot. dzięki uprzejmości Piotra Stanisławskiego / Wydawnictwo Karakter

The matter was finally settled – after five years in Paris, Alina Szapocznikow decided to return to Poland. After the trial was over and she had obtained a passport, she visited the country several times, expressing her delight in letters:

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Warsaw, so magnificent and dear to my heart. Nowy Świat freshly rebuilt, and Krakowskie Przedmieście, Muranów, the East-West Route, the theatre – all of this appeared to me, in the uncanny glow of the setting sun, quite unlike anything in Paris. There’s a unique atmosphere here, and the colours are more intense, more raw, not as idyllically harmonious as in Paris. The sun was ablaze like tongues of red-and-yellow fire in the windows, glaringly reflected from the eye-sockets of the ruins and warming the colours of the new houses that had just been built, without a single trace of patina on them.

On another occasion, however, she admitted:

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I’m starting to miss Paris. It’s such a special feeling, one that I don’t think anyone can ever truly leave behind, no matter which city they’re in. Paris has a way of infecting you; it burrows deep into a fresh body like a microbe.

While she’s in Poland, she longs for Paris, but while in Paris, she longs for Poland, even though, after the ‘uncanny glow of the setting sun’, a Stalinist night had just fallen upon the country. Marek Beylin, the artist’s biographer, attributed this to her wartime experiences – her effusive admiration for certain aspects of communist Poland did not, in his opinion, result from short-sightedness or political fanaticism, but was a means of escaping her post-war trauma. It was necessary so that she could ‘feel like a full participant in reality’ and ‘erase the horrific humiliation of humanity that had just occurred’. Although Paris had been a source of inspiration for many artists in the interwar period while Poland had offered a relatively peaceful existence, education, and opportunities to exhibit their work, the situation was quite the opposite for Szapocznikow – Paris offered opportunities and peace of mind, but it was Poland, even under Bierut, that provided scope for her imagination.

In 1952, after returning to Poland, Szapocznikow and Stanisławski got married and adopted a son. Her career began to take off. She was given a flat and several studios, and she sold many of her works to public collections. By the standards of that time, she was well-off – she even indulged in the bourgeois luxury of employing a housekeeper. Yet this was nothing compared to the material luxuries available on the other side of the Iron Curtain. After spending just a few years back in Poland, Szapocznikow once again became enchanted by Paris during a brief holiday – as if she were setting foot there for the very first time again. She was seduced by the capitalist glamour, the shop window displays, the scent of perfume, and the delicious coffee available at every street corner.

She spent over a decade in Poland, and during that time she gained recognition throughout Europe. She took part in international symposiums, exhibited in many countries, and was one of the Polish artists featured at the Venice Biennale in 1962. Following the breakdown of her marriage to Stanisławski, which was officially dissolved in 1958, Szapocznikow became romantically involved with the graphic artist Roman Cieślewicz, who took over as artistic director of the newly created magazine Ty i Ja in 1959 and, shortly after emigrating in 1963, went on to enjoy a spectacular career in the West.

In Poland, Szapocznikow was supported primarily by her mother. When her mother died, she began to think about Paris again. After a decade in Warsaw, the city had begun to feel stifling – she could never be anything there other than a big fish in a small pond. The only risky aspect was that after venturing out into wider waters, she might turn out to be nothing more than a minnow.

One foot on each side of the Iron Curtain

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Alina Szapocznikow with her husband Roman Cieślewicz in the garden of their home-studio, sitting on the statue 'Wielkie Brzuchy' (Big Bellies) from the series 'Brzuchy', Paris, France, 1972, photo: Maciej Musiał / PAP

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Shortly before her departure, Szapocznikow achieved one of the most important milestones in her career. After a period of portraying the human body with traditional sculpture materials, she changed her approach to both form and substance – she would no longer create full representations of the body but cast mere fragments of it, and synthetic resins became her favourite material. Using these tools, she started creating works in which the female body was analysed as a cultural fetish. First, she created a cast of her own leg (1962–1967), followed by numerous works featuring plastic casts, ranging from Multiple Portraits to lamps with shades shaped like lips or breasts. As she explained to the critic Jerzy Stajuda, she was ‘tormented by the increasing trend towards academic abstraction’ and began creating these sculptures ‘partly out of defiance, and perhaps because of a tendency towards artistic exhibitionism’.

She felt betrayed by a former friend from her student days, César Baldaccini, to whom, as she recalled, she had confided her ideas a few years earlier. He began bringing those ideas to life, producing, among other things, an oversized cast of his own thumb in 1965. Alina also had other sources of frustration: in Poland, she lacked the technical means to experiment with new materials (in Paris, however, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as synthetic resins could be supplied to her by Rhône-Poulenc). Moreover, following the Khrushchev thaw, which inspired a period of enthusiasm and hope for democratic change, the political climate had once again become oppressive.

In the summer of 1963, Szapocznikow and Cieślewicz left for Paris, where they would permanently remain. Before arriving in France, Szapocznikow took part in a sculpture symposium in Yugoslavia. Her son Piotr recalled: ‘We knew we were leaving for a long time. However, we couldn’t discuss it openly, for fear of not being granted passports.’ Formally, Szapocznikow still kept her apartment on Brzozowa Street in Warsaw and her art studio. At exhibitions and in publications, she stated simply that she ‘spends a lot of time in Paris’. She didn’t become involved in the Polish political émigré community, instead giving the impression that she was merely on an extended holiday.

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'Leg' by Alina Szapocznikow, clay, 1962, ©ADAGP, Paris, photo: Fabrice Gousset

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Alina Szapocznikow, "Noga", gips, 1962, ©ADAGP, Paris, fot. Fabrice Gousset

The strategy of keeping one foot (at least in appearance) in both countries required a delicate balancing act. But there were some advantages to this – she wasn’t burning her bridges in Warsaw, and it was much easier for her to gain recognition in Paris as a visitor from the East than as an emigrant. Beylin wrote:

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By settling in Paris, she lost much of the exotic appeal associated with artists from Eastern Europe. They were treated as a kind of novelty and even granted certain privileges – as long as they returned to their homeland and didn’t expect to function on an equal footing in the world that had welcomed them. If they wished to feel that they belonged in the West, barriers rose up before them that were not experienced by artists who had the good fortune of being born in a ‘better’ place.

Among the communist-leaning Parisian cultural elite, there was an explosive mix of the neocolonial belief in French superiority and a romanticised view of Eastern Bloc countries. So how could anyone willingly flee to the depraved West?

However, Szapocznikow wasn’t particularly well-connected in the Parisian artistic community either. When asked by Adam Leśniewski if she had any French friends, she replied: ‘Yes, the butcher from whom I buy meat.’ Of course, she was exaggerating – over the years she became friends with many people, including Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski. But above all, Szapocznikow’s key Parisian contact was Pierre Restany – one of the leading French critics of the time, famous primarily as a theorist and proponent of New Realism (Nouveau Réalisme). This was not a movement bound by strict rules or a manifesto in the interwar style – the label arose rather as an attempt to create a uniquely Parisian phenomenon, setting the tone in discussions about the contemporary world and offering a counterpoint to trends from across the Atlantic.

Although Szapocznikow had always been committed to maintaining her autonomy, she began to exhibit her work alongside the New Realists – the circumstances of her life didn’t permit her to remain independent. The price she paid was that Restany imposed his interpretation of her art upon it, in line with his movement’s vision: namely, that it ranged from working through her own personal problems and wartime trauma to a return to reality, but in a manner entirely different from that of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism not only had supporters in France, without any state mandates, but there was even a camp active in the 1960s that promoted Narrative Figuration as a reactionary counter-movement to the New Realists.

In the 1960s, the idea of returning to Poland was still on Szapocznikow’s mind, but in March 1968, she happened to visit Warsaw briefly and witnessed first-hand the infamous wave of antisemitic persecution that struck that year. Following this visit, she decided to settle permanently in France. She stopped pretending, gave up her flat and studio in Warsaw, and applied for French citizenship. It was granted to her a few years later, shortly before her death.

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'Goldfinger' by Alina Szapocznikow, 1965, photo: © Piotr Stanisławski / Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

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It’s difficult to gauge how differently Szapocznikow’s career would have developed had she not returned to Paris in the 1960s. However, the style of her works – particularly those intended for mass production as functional objects, such as lamps and cushions – were certainly better suited to the atmosphere of France at that time, with its post-war economic boom, consumerism and pop culture, deconstructed in texts written by Barthes and Debord and trickling through the Iron Curtain in a very limited and, moreover, distorted form.

Shortly after deciding to remain in Paris, she created Goldfinger, a sculpture consisting of the stumps of two splayed female legs, in the grip of a car suspension arm and painted gold. The reference to the hit 1964 film was obvious – the artist had likely watched it at the cinema, perhaps with her son, who was a teenager at the time and expressed his enthusiasm for the film in a letter to his father. And even if she hadn’t, she had certainly seen the posters featuring the film’s nude ‘Bond girl’ covered in gold paint. Neither this film nor any previous one in the series about the British spy James Bond, for obvious reasons, was screened in Polish cinemas during the communist era. In the following decade, the only exceptions would be the two films starring Roger Moore where the theme of rivalry with the Soviet Union doesn’t appear.

Goldfinger was interpreted rather superficially. Critics such as Restany focused on the use of the automotive element and the relationship between humans and machines, ignoring the grotesque criticism of the objectification of the female body. But one of the few who fully appreciated this sculpture was Marcel Duchamp. Thanks to his recommendation, Szapocznikow received a grant from the Copley Foundation, which provided her with significant financial support.

The price of a Paris career

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An exhibition of Alina Szapocznikow's sculptures at the Florence Huston Brown Gallery, pictured: Alina Szapocznikow (on the right) with the Polish ambassador to France (middle), Paris, France, 1967, photo: Władysław Sławny / Forum

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Working among renowned artists from the New Realist group and participating in exhibitions didn’t generate much income for Szapocznikow. At that time, it was primarily Cieślewicz who supported them both financially, since shortly after moving to Paris he took on the role of artistic director at the French edition of Elle. He also collaborated with other top magazines, such as Vogue. Although Paris had attracted female Polish sculptors several decades earlier by offering opportunities that didn’t exist in Poland, the situation was now quite different. When, in 1972, a year before Szapocznikow’s death, the major 72/72 exhibition initiated by Georges Pompidou took place at the Grand Palais, it featured works by 70 male artists and only two female artists: Niki de Saint Phalle and Sheila Hicks.

When the media took an interest in a female artist, they focused on her image far more than in the case of men. A few months after Szapocznikow’s death, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris organised her first major retrospective, and on the cover of the catalogue they featured not one of her works, but a photograph of the smiling, attractive artist with her wild black hair. A little earlier, when Jean-Marie Drot was filming a documentary about Szapocznikow for French television and asked her what life was like for women in Poland, she replied wryly: ‘The position of women in Poland is enviable compared to France. A woman in Poland has complete freedom and responsibility. And men are as chivalrous as in the Middle Ages… it’s extraordinary.’

Szapocznikow was capable of playing this game (the rules of which had been shaped by Cieślewicz in glossy magazines, to some extent), while simultaneously commenting on it ironically in her works, such as Iluminowana – a sculpture of a slender, almost boyish body modelled from plaster, with large, illuminated breasts made of colourful polyurethane and a head in the form of a misshapen, semi-transparent blob in which fragments of a face and breasts are embedded.

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'Iluminowana' by Alina Szapocznikow, 1966-1967, clay, coloured polyester, electric lighting, 155 x 57 x 40 cm, courtesy of Piotr Stanisławski & Galerie Gisela Capitain GmbH, Cologne, photo: WIELS

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Alina Szapocznikow, "Iluminowana kobieta", 1966-1967, gips, poliester barwny, światło elektryczne, 155 x 57 x 40 cm. Dzięki uprzejmości Piotra Stanisławskiego i Galerie Gisela Capitain GmbH, Kolonia., fot. WIELS

At the same time, on the western side of the Iron Curtain, a minor Cold War was raging: between the French and American art markets. The French were clearly losing. Their refusal to entertain the thought of losing their status as the global capital of modern art wasn’t helping matters. As Beylin wrote:

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The official, mainstream world of culture looked down on German art, dismissing it as historically inferior, and refused to acknowledge American art, which was just beginning to flourish and preparing to conquer Europe with its rich, dynamic galleries and museums.

In December 1965, Szapocznikow wearily wrote to Stanisławski, with whom she remained on friendly terms: ‘Paris is defending itself as well as it can against op, pop – stop – super op, and its exhibitions are becoming increasingly dull, displayed in run-down exhibition halls and galleries.’

She started seeking opportunities to expand her career overseas, but her first attempts to break into the American market ended in spectacular failure. The experimental materials that she was using, although fresh and appealing compared to bronze and stone, were also considerably more fragile. Her sculptures, shipped from France to galleries in Los Angeles and Washington, became irreparably damaged during their journey across the Atlantic and were left to languish in storage limbo. Undeterred by these setbacks, with her characteristic determination, Szapocznikow set off for the USA on her own.

In the spring of 1970, she stayed near New York with Wojciech Fangor, with whom she had become friends back in the early 1950s. Peter Selz, a curator at MoMA, took an interest in her work, but ultimately didn’t include it in an exhibition of Polish artists he organised. The artist’s efforts to attract the interest of American gallery owners also bore no fruit – it’s hard to say whether they ignored her because she was an artist from Poland, or rather because she was an artist from Paris. A major retrospective of Szapocznikow’s work at MoMA wouldn’t take place until 40 years after her death.

The Stations of the Cross

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Alina Szapocznikow in her studio, Paris, France, 1972, photo: Maciej Musiał / PAP

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When Piotr Stanisławski broke his leg while skiing in the spring of 1964, his mother sent him to convalesce at the dormitory of a graphic arts school in Osny, near Paris, which she’d found through the Julliard publishing house. It was established and administered by Polish Pallottine priests. It was there that she made one of her most important acquaintances in Paris.

A secularised Jewish woman with communist views might not have been thrilled by the idea of sending her son to a Catholic school, but the community led by Father Józef Sadzik was somewhat different in character from the rest of the Polish Church. Szapocznikow described it in a letter to Stanisławski:[Splitting in progress... ⌛]

„Są bardzo lewicowi i nie ma mowy o błędach i wypaczeniach. Piotrek był u nich ze złamaną nogą. Są anty-Wyszyński i anty-Piaseccy – prowadzą własną politykę – robienia z Polski pępka świata – i robią to z pewnym sukcesem”.

Od połowy lat 60. w pallotyńskim ośrodku przy rue Surcouf odbywają się spotkania i prelekcje, które wygłaszają m.in. Jerzy Giedroyc czy Konstanty Jeleński, bywają tam Czesław Miłosz, Julia Hartwig czy Stefan Kisielewski. Powstaje oficyna Éditions du Dialogue, potwierdzająca ambicje ośrodka – zamiast dewocyjnej pulpy wydają między innymi teksty teologiczne Paula Tillicha. A także tłumaczenia kilku ksiąg biblijnych autorstwa Miłosza, nad którymi poeta pracuje właśnie z inicjatywy Sadzika.

Sadzikowi Szapocznikow podarowuje pracę, w której odlewy jej piersi zamieniają się nie w gałki lodów, jak w Deserach, lub w klosze biurkowych lampek, ale w łzy Madonny. W nieforemnych kształtach artystka zatopiła reprodukcje twarzy gotyckiej figury.

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They’re very left-wing and there’s no talk of errors or distortions. Piotr stayed with them when he had a broken leg. They’re anti-Wyszyński and anti-Piasecki – they follow their own political agenda of making Poland the centre of the world, and they’re achieving some success at that.

From the mid-1960s, meetings and lectures were held at the Pallottine centre on Rue Surcouf, featuring speakers such as Jerzy Giedroyc and Konstanty Jeleński. Czesław Miłosz, Julia Hartwig and Stefan Kisielewski were also regular visitors. The Éditions du Dialogue publishing house was established, confirming the centre’s ambitions – instead of devotional drivel, they published such things as the theological writings of Paul Tillich. They also published translations of several books of the Bible by Miłosz, on which the poet had worked at Father Sadzik’s request.

Szapocznikow presented Father Sadzik with a sculpture in which casts of her breasts were transformed not into scoops of ice cream, as in Desserts, or lampshades, but into the tears of the Madonna. Within these irregular shapes, the artist embedded reproductions of a gothic figure’s face.

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'Piotr' by Alina Szapocznikow, from the Herbarium series, 1972, National Museum in Kraków, photo: A. Zgirska /
State Gallery of Art in Sopot

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Alina Szapocznikow, "Piotr" z cyklu "Zielnik", 1972, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, fot. A. Zgirska / Państwowa Galeria Sztuki w Sopocie

A few years later, in 1972, the artist created one of her final series, Herbarium, which consisted of 14 works. At the time, she was already battling a cancer relapse and knew she didn’t have much time left. She made a cast of her own body, a fragment of Jan Lebenstein’s face, and, in the remaining parts of the series, her son Piotr. One of the works is Piotr’s head surrounded by twigs resembling a crown of thorns. She donated the work titled Head of Christ to the Centre for Dialogue being built by Sadzik. There, Lebenstain created stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the Apocalypse. As Agata Jakubowska has suggested, perhaps the entire Herbarium was originally conceived as a variation on the Stations of the Cross.

As Piotr Kłoczowski has stated: ‘It’s difficult to say what the situation was from a religious or doctrinal perspective, but for Alina Szapocznikow it was a very meaningful relationship on a spiritual level.’ Whatever her metaphysical beliefs may have been, her friendship with a priest in the final years of her life may have influenced her attitude towards her illness and suffering.

Following her death in March 1973, Szapocznikow was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. There are graves of other artists in the same section of the cemetery, including Agnès Varda, Maurice Pialat and the Polish sculptor Maria Papa Rostkowska. Szapocznikow’s burial plot was arranged by Cieślewicz. Much later, he would find Szapocznikow’s will tucked into a book by Bruno Schulz – a book he adored, though, as it turns out, read far too rarely. In it, she had written:[Splitting in progress... ⌛]

„Pochowajcie mnie w Warszawie. Prośba ta jest ostatnim aktem, którym mogę podkreślić moje przywiązanie do przyrody, do ziemi, która nie jest jeszcze cała pokryta cementem. Chcę leżeć w Polsce, pod trawą, i tam też moje nazwisko nie jest dziwolągiem”.

Ale może to – niecelowe przecież – niespełnienie jej ostatniej woli jednak by się spodobało artystce rozdartej naprzemienną tęsknotą za oboma krajami. Ostatecznie została w Paryżu, chociaż jak się okazało, przed śmiercią myślała po raz nie wiadomo który o powrocie do Warszawy.

Text

Bury me in Warsaw. This request is the final act through which I will express my attachment to nature, to the earth that is not yet entirely covered in cement. I want to rest eternally in Poland, beneath the grass, and there, too, my name is a familiar one.

But perhaps this – unintentional, of course – failure to carry out her last wish would nevertheless have pleased the artist, who had spent her life perpetually torn by her longing for both countries. She had ultimately remained in Paris even though, as people eventually discovered, shortly before her death she had contemplated returning to Warsaw, like so many times before.

Originally written in Polish, May 2026, translated by Scotia Gilroy, May 2026

_^Sources:_{^{Kroją mi się piękne sprawy. Listy Aliny Szapocznikow i Ryszarda Stanisławskiego 1948–1971}}_{^{(Beauty Lies Ahead: The Letters of Alina Szapocznikow and Ryszard Stanisławski, 1948–1971), Warsaw–Kraków 2012; M. Beylin,}}_{^{Ferwor. Życie Aliny Szapocznikow}}_{^{(Fervour: The Life of Alina Szapocznikow), Warsaw–Kraków 2015; A. Jakubowska,}}_{^{Portret wielokrotny dzieła Aliny Szapocznikow}}_{^{(A Multiple Portrait of Alina Szapocznikow’s Work), Poznań 2008; A. Jakubowska, ‘„Krużlowa” i „Głowa Chrystusa” Aliny Szapocznikow’ (Alina Szapocznikow’s “Krużlowa” and “Head of Christ”),}}_{^{Sacrum et Decorum. Materiały i studia z historii sztuki sakralnej}}_{^{(“Sacrum et Decorum: Materials and Studies in the History of Sacred Art), vol. 6, 2013, pp. 119–131; K. Zychowicz,}}_{^{Paryska lewica w stalinowskiej Warszawie}}_{^{(The Parisian Left in Stalinist Warsaw), Warsaw 2014}}

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