This symposium aims to explore the interactions at work between Louise Bourgeois and Alina Szapocznikow and, through them, question the creative dynamics of women artists in places of production and exhibition during the 1960s and 1970s with regard to their consequences with social issues of the memory process.

From the arrival of Louise Bourgeois in Paris on the occasion of the hanging of La Fée Couturière in the gardens of the Rodin Museum for the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture in 1965 to the death of Alina Szapocznikow in 1973, the two artists maintained relationships built on admiration and competition. Both actively claimed their independence through creative experiments, trips to places of production and exhibition, development of networks of critics and gallery owners. Considering that they drew a conscious or unconscious inspiration from their lives, does the biographical prism shed light on the tensions within their works? How does their meeting fit in the history of women’s confidence in post-war contemporary art? Does it also allow us to renew the gaze on their works as well as on the possible genealogies and exchanges between women artists?

Through their interactions, the conference aims to consider the activity and the status of women artists in society with regard to what gives structure to the worlds of art: institutions, distribution networks, production circuits, market but also dialogues between artists. While the “cordées” made of emulation and questioning of Pablo Picasso with Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin or Alberto Giacometti have been widely studied and exhibited, those of women artists remain largely unexplored. Could the interactions between Louise Bourgeois and Alina Szapocznikow be a paradigm for a new dynamic approach to the works of women artists?

The analysis of their exchanges during this period makes it possible to study in more detail this decisive moment in their careers and in post-war sculpture when, allowing themselves to look at numerous creative practices (surrealist, biomorphic, antique, abstract, pop), the two female artists freed themselves from movements and developed personal practices, sometimes offbeat, ironic, and humorous, always deliberately subjective and radical.

The symposium will be held in French and in English and with the collaboration of The Estate of Alina Szapoznikow / Piotr Stanislawski / Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris / Hauser & Wirth and The Easton Foundation

Practical information

Friday  7 and Saturday 8 October 2022, from 9:30 to 5:30 pm
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris