Zachęta National Gallery of Art

curator: Ewa Toniak
collaboration: Julia Leopold
scenography: Małgorzata Szczęśniak
visualisation: Łukasz Kwietniewski, Łukasz Engel

Alina Ślesińska is a great absence in the history of Polish contemporary art. She is compared to the other famous Alina, Szapocznikow, for like her she made her debut in the 50s, in the period of socrealism, and like her she was also interested in figurative sculpture inspired by the work of Henry Moore. However, Alina Ślesińska’s work is currently hardly even given a reference in monographs on contemporary sculpture and in dictionaries of art.     

This monographic exhibition of the artist’s work will in addition ask broader questions about the position of women in the canon of Polish contemporary art, as well as about the role of this artist herself, who in the late 50s and early 60s enjoyed spectacular success in the West; first as a prophet of changes and of the taking up of the poetics of modernity behind the iron curtain, and then from the beginning of the 60s as the author of experimental “propositions for architecture”, eroding the boundaries between the disciplines of sculpture and architecture. She was the only woman sculptor who, in this period, made such bold inroads into the field of architecture.       

From the establishment, to a high profile media career, through the secrets and mystifications surrounding a suggestion of madness: this is the first complete account of a forgotten artist.