Barbara FALENDER (1947), EROTIC Pillow from the series: erotic pillows; 1973

biscuit; 18 x 20 x 10 cm
Sign: FALENDER
Pillow from collector's series no. 4
Provenance: purchase from the artist, private collection Poland.

Series no. 1 was made in epoxy
Series no. 2 in Carrara marble
Series No. 3 in bronze

Outstanding Polish sculptor, graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. She creates sculptures in stone, bronze and porcelain, often combining different materials. Winner of many awards, including: Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award (2008). Decorated by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage with the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture Gloria Artis (2007). Scholarship holder among others: Italian Government (1976), French Government (1994, 1996), Kosciuszko Foundation, New York (1998), Ministry of Culture and Art (2005), Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2010). Barbara Falender's works can be found in numerous private collections and museum collections, including the Polish Sculpture Center in Oronsko and the National Museums in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan and Szczecin.

Her diploma thesis was an extremely daring project, for the time, which was a group of figures "Portrait of a Selected Collectivity. People of Krakowskie Przedmieście" - echoing the events of March'68. The making of the sculptures was preceded by photographic studies of people met on the street, friends and models, photographs with a strong sociological and observational background. The work consisted of nine plaster figures set on a wooden platform, and their lying (dead) counterparts below.
In the 1970s, the artist creates sculptures with erotic themes. They were inspired by the traces of bodies left in soft bedding. This inconspicuous moment of everyday life developed into the sensual project "Erotic Pillows" (from 1973), initially combined with an investigation into the use of epoxy in sculpture. Also created during this period were complementary sculptures "He" and "She" also made of epoxy are the famous torsos, which the artist transformed into a vagina and a phallus. "Pillows" is an extraordinarily beautiful aesthetic work, on the one hand reminiscent of pure classical form and on the other bold to this day contemporary intimate sculpture.
As Dorota Grubba-Thiede wrote in "The current of figuration in post-war Polish sculpture" (TAKO 2016): "The Falender series was, after Alina Szapocznikow's Lamps and Desserts of the late 1960s, the boldest interpretation of sensuality on the ground of our sculpture, representing the current of fetish objects present in world art." In Carrara, Italy, marble versions of "Erotic Pillows" were created, as well as sculptures in which the artist began to combine different types of stone.
In Falender's work it is impossible to omit "Sarcophagi" such as Sarcophagus (Romeo and Juliet) or Sarcophagi (made of black oak beloved by Barbara Falender), which are extremely important for the artist, dedicated to her parents in a form resembling hammocks that are a crossing of a certain boundary. Suspended in space, the monumental dormant figures contain the mystery of death on the one hand, and the equally eternal mystery of love on the other.