The compact block of stone, with organic allusions, set in a meadow above ancient Roman quarries, is the work of one of the most famous Polish sculptors of the 20th century. It has remained as one of some 50 realisations of renowned international plein-air works.

Together with several other well-known sculptors, Szapocznikow was invited in the summer of 1961 by the organiser of the first plein-air of this kind in Europe, Karl Prantl (as the second Pole, after Olgierd Truszyński). Artists from several countries in Europe, Lebanon and Japan were there to work in ancient Roman quarries, using local sandstone. This was the third such symposium in succession, a tradition that was to continue in Sankt Margarethen for many years, while spreading to other countries.

In an interview at the time, the artist recalled the joy of working in stone, without hiding the troubles that forging in a large block had brought. She combined her previous experience of working in stone with the fundamental interest manifested throughout her work in corporeality. Biological associations are extremely discreet here and are also hinted at by the title of the sculpture. Szapocznikow refers to the attempts of Auguste Rodin, who sought to express the life of the body in hard material; she would take up a similar concept of stone sculpture on several more occasions, including in the smaller version of Flesh II (1962, depository of Piotr Stanisławski at the Museum of Art in Łódź), while working at the plein-air workshop in Portoroz in 1963. In a poem-memoir dedicated to his friend, Wojciech Fangor put the issue of this 'Rodin-like' tension this way: "St. Margarethen Quarries / Sandstone dust, chisel and wooden hammer / Hard geometry of rock / Nibbled by tiny strokes / Of armed hands / Transformed into a tender surface / Of fleshy flesh/ Alina".