WARSAW.- Thought lost for over half a century, Alina Szapocznikow’s famous sculpture, Bird, has just been found. Since the late artist’s sensational retrospective, Sculpture Undone 1955-1972, at the MoMA New York in 2013, Szapocznikow has been one of the most sought-after Polish artists on the international art market. The unique work will be auctioned off at DESA Unicum’s Sculpture Auction on 7 April.

New York state. A small provincial town. A warm July afternoon. A colonial-style house with a porch facing a sunlit garden. A middle-aged man, a distinguished collector, is presenting paintings from his collection to a Polish expert. He uses the opportunity to ask him to identify a sculpture piece; a surname written in the Czech language means that he doesn’t know who its author is. Private investigations have proved futile, the Czech connection produced no results. The characteristic 160-centimetre sculpture is kept in a dusty outhouse in the shade of the main building. It turns out to be a work, lost for over 50 years, by the most outstanding Polish woman artist, Alina Szapocznikow. Discovered under a musty tarpaulin, it is worth a small fortune – probably over $300,000. The Polish expert was Juliusz Windorbski, the chairman of board of DESA Unicum.

Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973) was born to a Jewish family; both her parents were doctors. During the war, she was imprisoned at the Pabianice and Litzmannstadt ghettos and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps. After liberation, she didn’t return to Poland for a long time, studying first in Prague, then at the distinguished École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A grave illness forced her to go back eventually to her home country. The Holocaust experience is strongly reflected in Szapocznikow’s oeuvre. Considered the most influential Polish woman sculptor ever, recent years saw renewed interest in her work. Her solo retrospective, Sculpture Undone 1955-1972, shown at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, the Hammer Museum in New York, and finally at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was an immense success. In 2012, London’s Tate Modern devoted to Szapocznikow a special programme of film screenings and lectures. Her works have been acquired in recent years for some of the world’s most distinguished art collections, including those of MoMA, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, or Tate Modern, London. DESA Unicum is currently the only auction house in Poland holding auctions dedicated to Szapocznikow. Due to strong market demand, their number has doubled.

The auctioned sculpture, Bird, was made in the late 1950s at the artist’s studio at Królewska Street in Warsaw. Szapocznikow was already an established and recognised artist. Now she had her sights set on the American market. The group show, Polish Painting and Sculpture, at the Gres Gallery in Washington, D.C., was a success, but after the exhibition the work got lost. Today it has been unexpectedly found. Whereas Szapocznikow’s later works (created after her relocation to Paris in 1963) appear at international auctions, this particular piece is truly unique. Its price estimate for the upcoming auction is $230,000+ to $360,000+.

Its roots dating back to 1950, DESA Unicum is the largest and fastest growing company on the Polish art market today. Asking prices at the upcoming Sculpture Auction range from $230 to $100,000.