Description:
seated bald figure wrapped in a cloak and holding a bird
Label Text:
Selvaggia & Ucello is one of a series of twenty prints loosely based on a 19th-century story about a 15th-century Italian artist and his model. By transforming the artist into a bird (uccello is bird in Italian), Norma Bessouet imagines a number of encounters between bird and model in changing otherworldly environments. In this print, the artist’s model, Selvaggia, dressed in religious garb and surrounded by a misty halo, cradles the bird in a manner reminiscent of the Renaissance Virgin and Child.
Originally from Argentina, Norma Bessouet learned to draw from her Italian mother. It was not until 1964, when Bessouet entered the Arts Academy in Buenos Aires, that she was exposed to such contemporary art trends as abstract expressionism and pop art. Her general disinterest in modernity and love for the Italian masters of Renaissance Siena caused her career to develop relatively slowly. Being a woman artist in a patriarchal Latin society created another obstacle that motivated her to move to Europe to study art. In Europe she turned from painting to sculpting surreal Victorian dolls. Bessouet immigrated to the U.S. in 1981. In the context of the free and experimental vibe of the New York City art scene, Bessouet was finally able to truly enjoy artistic creation free from the constraints she had felt in her Latin American home and in Europe. She returned to painting but continued to create even stranger doll-like, androgynous ethereal creatures on canvas and paper as reflected in this work
Tags:
figures; birds Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2016.56.22 |
