Sculpture or Three-dimensional Work by Foreign Artist
Inventory Number
90-SF-007
Orpheus, the celebrated poet and player of the lyre in Greek mythology, descends to the underworld to retrieve his deceased wife Eurydice. With poetry and music, he persuades Hades, the king of the underworld, to allow him to bring her home. However, on his way back, he becomes anxious and looks behind him, breaking a promise he made to Hades. Ossip Zadkine’s statue depicts this moment. Orpheus, immersed in darkness up to his ankles, twists at the waist as he looks back. The work was inspired by a cross-shaped piece of wood that the sculptor came across by chance. Orpheus’s upper body is unified with his lyre, an instrument that the sculptor himself loved to play. Having transferred from the land of the living to that of the dead and returned, Orpheus was regarded as forerunner of the Surrealists, who explored the world of the unconscious. Meanwhile, his transformed appearance here perhaps echoes that of the Jewish sculptor himself, who sought exile in America to escape the holocaust and the war in Europe. (NAKAMURA Naoaki)
Orpheus, the celebrated poet and player of the lyre in Greek mythology, descends to the underworld to retrieve his deceased wife Eurydice. With poetry and music, he persuades Hades, the king of the underworld, to allow him to bring her home. However, on his way back, he becomes anxious and looks behind him, breaking a promise he made to Hades. Ossip Zadkine’s statue depicts this moment. Orpheus, immersed in darkness up to his ankles, twists at the waist as he looks back. The work was inspired by a cross-shaped piece of wood that the sculptor came across by chance. Orpheus’s upper body is unified with his lyre, an instrument that the sculptor himself loved to play. Having transferred from the land of the living to that of the dead and returned, Orpheus was regarded as forerunner of the Surrealists, who explored the world of the unconscious. Meanwhile, his transformed appearance here perhaps echoes that of the Jewish sculptor himself, who sought exile in America to escape the holocaust and the war in Europe.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)