Louise Bourgeois (1911, Paris – 2010, New York) was born into a family engaged in the sale and restoration of antique tapestries. She initially studied mathematics and geometry at the Sorbonne, but after her mother’s death she abandoned science to devote herself to art. She went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, the École du Louvre, and the Académie Julian, among others. In 1938 she moved to New York, where she lived and worked until her death. 

Her practice revolved around the female experience – physicality, sexuality, motherhood, family, death, and the subconscious. Bourgeois regarded art as a form of therapy, a means of working through traumatic childhood experiences, particularly her father’s affair with the family governess. In her late 1960s sculptures, such as Cunt I: Untitled (Femme) (1969/70), she boldly explored female sexuality. Her materials ranged from fabric to traditional sculptural media such as stone and bronze, as well as more unconventional ones: bones, furniture, clothing, and fragments of architecture. Although active for many decades, she achieved broad recognition only in the 1980s. Reportedly, until the end of her life, a sculpture by Alina Szapocznikow, given to her during their meeting in 1970, stood on her bedside table.

Barbara Falender (b. 1947, Wrocław) lives and works in Warsaw. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the studio of Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz. After graduating, she began experimenting with synthetic materials, as exemplified by the first version of her Erotic Pillows series, which combines the form of everyday objects with intimate traces. In 1976 she travelled to Carrara, where she perfected her marble-carving technique, producing works such as Dream and Source, preceded by sketches inspired by personal experiences, including her first childbirth. At the same time, she encountered the work of Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973), whose biography and art became a lasting point of reference for her. In 1978 she created Hommage to Alina Szapocznikow, and in 2023 she made a new version of the work in Dębnica marble and other materials.

Since the late 1970s Falender has explored physicality and intimate relationships, creating sculptures in diverse materials, including Nude, Between Reality and Dream, and the Zones series. In the 1980s she co-created the Warsaw art scene, alongside artists such as Krzysztof Jung and Waldemar Raniszewski, who also posed for her drawings and sculptures. To this day, she remains committed to the physical labour of working in stone, creating portraits of women who played significant roles in her life.

Chloe Piene (b. 1972) lives and works between Warsaw and New York. She studied art history at Columbia University, New York, and fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London. During her studies she focused on Northern Renaissance art, analysing the work of Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, and Hans Baldung Grien. She paid particular attention to the expressive qualities of line in prints and to the physicality and brutality of works from this period, in which bodies serve as sites of pain, far removed from the classical ideal.

For Piene, the body is a fragile vessel concealing the unknown, the unconscious, and the fearful – that which lies beneath the surface. She approaches drawing as a material act, a trace of the body inscribed in the density and tension of lines. Her work is also inspired by folk tales and legends. She is drawn to the ambiguous and the non-obvious: the space “in-between,” hybrid creatures, and dark, impenetrable places. Among the pre-modern figures that inspire her practice is Baba Yaga, a childhood presence in stories and imagination. Louise Bourgeois and Camille Claudel are key points of reference for her, while her work has been compared to that of Hans Bellmer, Egon Schiele, and Willem de Kooning. In 2021 she met Barbara Falender during an exhibition at Alina Szapocznikow’s former studio. She was captivated by the sculptor’s hands and by the physical traces of labour visible in the marble surface.

Alina Szapocznikow (1926, Kalisz – 1973, Passy) survived the Second World War in the ghettos of Pabianice and Łódź, as well as in concentration camps. After the war she settled in Prague, where she studied sculpture at the Higher School of Applied Arts, later continuing her education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1950 she returned to Poland, though she travelled frequently to France, where she eventually settled permanently in 1963. 

Already in the 1940s Szapocznikow began to struggle with serious health problems, including breast cancer, which was treated with experimental and aggressive methods that, among other consequences, prevented her from having children. From the early 1960s she turned to new materials such as polyester, polyurethane, and plastic cement. Her work was inspired by an interest in fetishism, understood as a focus on corporeality and bodily fragments, particularly those of the female body. In 1966 she created a series of illuminated lamp-sculptures using imprints of lips – her own and those of friends – followed two years later by Belly-Cushions, made of soft sponge and conceived as functional objects. In 1970 she visited New York, where she reportedly met Louise Bourgeois, and later the marble quarries in Carrara, where she developed new sculptural work. By 1973 she was in the final stages of bone cancer, suffering progressive paralysis and severe pain that could no longer be relieved.