Le retour de la fille prodigue

Conceived between 1953 and 1956 and cast in 1963 during the artist’s lifetime, Le retour de la fille prodigue exemplifies Zadkine’s expressive interpretation of biblical and mythological themes through a modernist lens. The composition’s dynamic interplay of angular planes and lyrical movement reflects the artist’s lifelong fascination with human emotion and spiritual reconciliation. The work revisits the parable of the Prodigal Child—a narrative of estrangement, repentance, and forgiveness—here reimagined through the rare figure of the daughter rather than the son. This subject allowed Zadkine to explore tenderness and redemption through the lens of his mature cubist style.
The sculpture’s elongated forms, rhythmic asymmetry, and expressive torsion reflect the artist’s synthesis of Cubist construction with a renewed lyricism that emerged in his work of the 1950s. The faceted surfaces and interlocking volumes, while rooted in his earlier formal experiments, now serve a profoundly humanist vision: the body as vessel of emotion and spiritual return. Cast in bronze with a rich brown patina, Le retour de la fille prodigue encapsulates Zadkine’s belief in sculpture as a language of moral and emotional restoration—a testament to his role as one of the key voices bridging pre-war Cubism and post-war expressionism in European sculpture.