The publication is published on the occasion of the solo exhibition "Alina Szapocznikow. Body
Languages" at the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg. It combines among others 13 short texts by reknown
scholars on her work and the medium of sculpture addressing key topics as casting erotic
objects memory fragmented bodies and plasticity. Alina Szapocznikow (1926 Kalisz PL - 1973
Passy FR) is one of the outstanding female sculptors of the 20th century. The central focus of
Szapocznikow's works is on the human body through which she uncompromisingly thematizes the
fragility of existence and the paradoxes of life. Her untiring investigation of unconventional
sculptural practices materials and forms assures her a status as one of the pioneering female
sculptors who-alongside Lynda Benglis Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse- made fundamental
contributions to an expansion of the sculptural. The vocabulary of the sculptor includes direct
body casts of "erogenous zones" - mouths breasts and bellies - which she develops further in
serial formations sometimes modelling them whether as seductive lamps marble belly folds
that stimulate the sense of touch cyborg-like figures or skin-like shells. Traces of memory
run through her entire oeuvre: in addition to memorial designs in remembrance of the Holocaust
she conceives her Souvenir-series in which - as with the tumor objects - she integrates
photographs and newspaper clippings that shimmer through the polyester and keep the memory
alive. Today Alina Szapocznikow's work is just as visionary as at the time of its creation.
