A sculpture by Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow, who died in 1973, has recently been rediscovered. The work was found in the outhouse of an art collector in upstate New York State. Bird, thought to have been lost for over 50 years, was made in the artist’s Warsaw-based studio in the 1950s. As a teenager, Szapocznikow (along with her Jewish family) was held at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps. She then went on to study at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2011, a retrospective of her work, Sculpture Undone 1955-1972, was held at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, and continued to the USA where it was shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Bird is now up for sale in Warsaw, where the estimate is between $230,000 and $360,000. The takes place on 7 April at DESA Unicum Auction House, Warsaw.
6 April 2016.
