materials for the project My American Dream (1-32/32)
Upon an invitation by Pierre Restany and Alfred Bonino in 1970 to participate in an exhibition Art Concepts from Europe, Szapocznikow presented a text entitled My American Dream, in which she described her idea to create a marble 2:1 model of a Rolls-Royce car. She intended to show the project at Documenta 5, curated by Harald Szeemann, and tried to raise funds so as to cover the huge costs of the undertaking, in particular the costs of the material.
The artist collected materials on the history of Rolls-Royce, the different models of the brand, as well as of the famous statuette. Alina Szapocznikow never succeeded in creating the large-size Rolls-Royce sculpture. Two small versions were made, each 80 cm long; the first one (1969), made from Carrara marble, was commissioned by a well known collector interested in auto-motive motifs in art, Hervé Poulain; the second one was made in 1971 from pink Portuguese marble.
The motif of Rolls-Royce is also present in a text accompanying a 1971 series Fotorzeźby [Photo-scultpures] – a photographic record by Roman Cieślewicz of forms created from chewing gum. Both works were first presented at the Instants et Choses exhibition at the Aurora Gallery in Geneva, October 1971.
