Femme couchée

The sculptural form of Femme couchée, at once both rounded and angular, strongly recalls the reclining figure of Femme sur un divan (lot 81). Executed at around the same time, and strikingly similar in pose, both works seem to share the same preoccupations with volume and form; in fact the present work may well represent an attempt to resolve in three dimensions the questions posed by the 1942 oil, so similar are they in lyrical movement. Domínguez was one of the first members of the Surrealist movement to create Surrealist objects; from 1934 his constructed objects betray a sensitivity to working in three dimensions, as well as the potential for the interplay of sculptural forms that the present work displays. The sculptures produced in the 1940s often have detachable parts; the present work comprises three separate moving parts.