This exhibition at the Kampa Museum’s ‘Stables’ will showcase the work of Czech-Polish sculptor Elżbieta Grosse (*1937). Born in Warsaw, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in her hometown in 1966, before settling permanently in Czechoslovakia in 1973. Initially creating metal sculptures, she turned to ceramics for financial reasons, largely developing her work within the confines of applied art.

In the late 1980s, Grosse returned to free-form sculpture, a practice she continues to this day. She works on a monumental scale with fireclay. She moulds the clay directly, revealing the material and adding details, while her choice of monochrome black enhances the plasticity and radical nature of her formal solutions. Through her distinctive sculptural language, based on the tension between clearly constructed geometric forms and organically vibrant surfaces, she explores themes of fragility, transience, and instability — issues deeply connected to the human condition.

Alongside medium-sized sculptures, the exhibition will present Grosse’s largest work to date: Marathon (2022). Over the course of a single year, Grosse created this sculptural ensemble comprising 37 human legs – symbolising the year of the artist’s birth – each one distinguished by its modelling, surface and dramatic form, and imbued with its own story. While the individual limbs can stand as independent sculptures, it is only within the context of the whole that they enter into mutual relationships, configurations and connections. This subliminally refers not only to the human being as a unique individual, but also to the principles of human society.

Ilona Víchová