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Lot Essay
L'Eau is undoubtedly one of the most important of Germaine Richier's sculptures. Not only does it represent the culmination of a number of sculptures of the seated female figure that had preoccupied the artist since the mid-1940s, but it is also one of the most eloquent and instantly recognisable images of transmutation in her oeuvre.
In the present work, the image of 'Woman' is transformed into an amphora or ancient water jug. The gentle ease with which this is conveyed, purely by the open neck of the figure and the handles that extend like epaulettes from the figure's shoulders, is what lends the complete work its refinement. Because of their reproductive power, women have since pre-historic times often been portrayed as vessels. Indeed, many of the oldest art works known to man - ancient mother goddess figurines - depict woman in just this way, as the fertile vessel that gives life. In L'Eau, Richier conveys just this archetypal sense of the female as a life-giving container, and through her magnificient modelling of the material also suggests the fluidity of water, the essential element on which all life depends.
L'Eau is essentially a water-goddess. The solid and earthy materiality of her wide-hipped body, her large drooping breasts and her identity as a container suggest the power of her fertility and her reproductive capability. In addition to this, from the surface of her amphora neck and shoulders, there seems to emanate a liquid that flows down and into her full and heavy breasts and seemingly soaks into the earthiness of her solid torso. This smooth fluid surface cascades in some areas falling against her figure in sheets while in other areas, particularly her spindly Giacometti-like limbs, it trickles to an end at her hands and feet giving an overall impression of a powerful chthonic figure who generates the fluid of life.
In the present work, the image of 'Woman' is transformed into an amphora or ancient water jug. The gentle ease with which this is conveyed, purely by the open neck of the figure and the handles that extend like epaulettes from the figure's shoulders, is what lends the complete work its refinement. Because of their reproductive power, women have since pre-historic times often been portrayed as vessels. Indeed, many of the oldest art works known to man - ancient mother goddess figurines - depict woman in just this way, as the fertile vessel that gives life. In L'Eau, Richier conveys just this archetypal sense of the female as a life-giving container, and through her magnificient modelling of the material also suggests the fluidity of water, the essential element on which all life depends.
L'Eau is essentially a water-goddess. The solid and earthy materiality of her wide-hipped body, her large drooping breasts and her identity as a container suggest the power of her fertility and her reproductive capability. In addition to this, from the surface of her amphora neck and shoulders, there seems to emanate a liquid that flows down and into her full and heavy breasts and seemingly soaks into the earthiness of her solid torso. This smooth fluid surface cascades in some areas falling against her figure in sheets while in other areas, particularly her spindly Giacometti-like limbs, it trickles to an end at her hands and feet giving an overall impression of a powerful chthonic figure who generates the fluid of life.