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Lot Essay
‘The face is a void, an emotion.’ – Marisa Merz
Marissa Merz began constructing her series of otherworldly heads in 1975, first in wood and subsequently in wax and clay. Untitled, 1983 is an exceptional example in bronze, a delicate cast of long fingers cradling a head, and Merz’s touch is evident in the warm folds of the surface. The sculpture seems to create itself, a metaphor for the artist’s own hands, forming an enigmatic and psychologically nuanced self-portrait. Curator Dieter Schwarz explains that ‘the gazes of these figures, which avoid eye contact with the viewer approaching from the front, are just as much metaphors for Merz’s sculpture as they are essential factors characterizing them as figures that respond to their spatial surroundings rather than potential interlocutors that one might look in the eye’ (D. Schwarz, ‘The Irony of Marisa Merz’, October, Volume 124, Post-war Italian Art, Spring, 2008, p. 165). Merz rose to international prominence in connection with Arte Povera, a movement highly concerned with the body, and her subsequent practice was marked by a bodily and gendered investment filtered through her experience as the sole woman protagonist of the movement.
Marissa Merz began constructing her series of otherworldly heads in 1975, first in wood and subsequently in wax and clay. Untitled, 1983 is an exceptional example in bronze, a delicate cast of long fingers cradling a head, and Merz’s touch is evident in the warm folds of the surface. The sculpture seems to create itself, a metaphor for the artist’s own hands, forming an enigmatic and psychologically nuanced self-portrait. Curator Dieter Schwarz explains that ‘the gazes of these figures, which avoid eye contact with the viewer approaching from the front, are just as much metaphors for Merz’s sculpture as they are essential factors characterizing them as figures that respond to their spatial surroundings rather than potential interlocutors that one might look in the eye’ (D. Schwarz, ‘The Irony of Marisa Merz’, October, Volume 124, Post-war Italian Art, Spring, 2008, p. 165). Merz rose to international prominence in connection with Arte Povera, a movement highly concerned with the body, and her subsequent practice was marked by a bodily and gendered investment filtered through her experience as the sole woman protagonist of the movement.