Mechanical Nike. Resia Schor’s Mixed Media Sculptures on Wars Past and Present

peer-reviewed article

Katarzyna Trzeciak

ke.trzeciak@uw.edu.pl
University of Warsaw, Institute of Art History (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5653-6863

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of a hitherto unresearched group of works by the Polish-Jewish artist Resia Schor (1910–2006) dating from the period 1979–1990. Born in Lublin, Schor studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1930 to 1936. In 1938 she emigrated to Paris, from where she and her husband Ilya Schor were forced to escape after the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1941 the Schors settled in New York. It was only in the last decades of her life that Schor began to produce artworks that directly touched upon political topics; those were mixed-media sculptures commenting on wars past and present. By engaging the Benjaminian concept of memory, these works linked the artist’s past – her personal experience of war and loss – with her reaction to contemporary acts of violence.



Keywords:

war, anti-war art, modern sculpture, Jewish art, women’s art, United States of America, American culture

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Published
2026-07-17

Cited by

Trzeciak, K. (2026). Mechanical Nike. Resia Schor’s Mixed Media Sculptures on Wars Past and Present. Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 88(2), 205–234. https://doi.org/10.36744/bhs.3798

Authors

Katarzyna Trzeciak 
ke.trzeciak@uw.edu.pl
University of Warsaw, Institute of Art History Poland
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5653-6863

Katarzyna Ewa Trzeciak is researcher and curator of exhibitions of women artists. She is a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Humanities, University of Warsaw, where, under the supervision of Prof. Agata Jakubowska, she is conducting research into the histories of Jewish women students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow during the interwar period. In 2021, she graduated Master of Arts in Art History from the Faculty of Visual Culture Management, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.



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