.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In the mid-1970s, Vari turned solely to sculpture as an artistic output. As the artist herself commented, ‘I want to touch, I want the volume, I want to be able to work around my work, I want to create into space, to prove what I created really does exist. Discovering these things, I began to feel my own existence’ (the artist quoted in exhibition catalogue, Le Désir de la Forme, Contini Art, London, 2015, p. 9). Vari invites the viewer to engage closely with her work, ‘knowing that only when one moves around her sculptures will their complexity be fully revealed’ (Dr K. Angelou, Sophie Vari: A Critical Response, Waddington Custot, London, 2023, p.2).
Acutely aware of the artistic traditions preceding her, Vari draws inspiration from a myriad of sources - Mayan, Egyptian, Olmec and Cycladic artistic traditions, as well as Ancient and Baroque aesthetics. Thematically, the artist’s work is predominantly occupied with the investigation of volume, form and balance through her coherent visual language - L’intérieure de la Pensée, in which Vari balances bold curvilinear forms with angular negative spaces, is a magnificent example. Much like the work of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, Vari utilises space as a material in her compositions.
Vari met Moore in 1969, and has often recounted the immense effect this meeting had on her oeuvre. In Moore’s studio, the importance of purity of materials was impressed upon Vari, as well as the role light can play in sculptural works – both of which are highly evident in L’intérieure de la Pensée.
Acutely aware of the artistic traditions preceding her, Vari draws inspiration from a myriad of sources - Mayan, Egyptian, Olmec and Cycladic artistic traditions, as well as Ancient and Baroque aesthetics. Thematically, the artist’s work is predominantly occupied with the investigation of volume, form and balance through her coherent visual language - L’intérieure de la Pensée, in which Vari balances bold curvilinear forms with angular negative spaces, is a magnificent example. Much like the work of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, Vari utilises space as a material in her compositions.
Vari met Moore in 1969, and has often recounted the immense effect this meeting had on her oeuvre. In Moore’s studio, the importance of purity of materials was impressed upon Vari, as well as the role light can play in sculptural works – both of which are highly evident in L’intérieure de la Pensée.