The Leaf (La Feuille)
Germaine RICHIER
(French, 1904-1959)
The Leaf (La Feuille)
Date1948
Mediumbronze
Dimensionsobject: 55 x 13 x 7 1/2 in. (139.7 x 33 x 19.1 cm)
base: 2 1/2 x 2 3/4 x 6 1/4 in. (6.4 x 7 x 15.9 cm)
ClassificationSCULPTURE
Credit LineSBMA, Bequest of Wright S. Ludington
Object number1993.1.38
Subject(s)
- figures (representations)
- girls
- nudes
Collection
- Contemporary
On View
On viewCollections
Label TextRichier studied with Auguste Rodin’s star pupil, Antoine Bourdelle. At Bourdelle’s studio, she crossed paths with the better-known Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who was her exact contemporary. Not unlike Giacometti, Richier explored the expressive power of the emaciated human form, which, in these years, inevitably elicited memories of the ravaged bodies documented in photographs and films of the devastation caused by the World Wars. Richier’s half-woman, half-tree figure reflects this sentiment and recalls, in condensed form, the Ovidian tale of the nymph Daphne, who escapes Apollo’s unwanted advances when her father, a river god, transforms her into a laurel tree. The pitted bronze surface, complete with incised leaves and bark-like skin, appears to be in a state of decay, while her painfully attenuated limbs bear a weightless fragility.
