Akhmatova's Monument

About the Work

From the Artist

This is a line drawing litho in which the color plays a secondary but subtle role—there were six color separations, two shades of black were used and a white under everything was used for luminosity—as this is a sculptor's drawing rather than a painter's, the line and contour rather than color is predominant. The automatic writing in red [includes] the signature of the artist and [explores the] line between written poetry and drawn poetry the image is dedicated to [the] famous woman Russian poet Anna Akhmatova [1889–1966]. She is revered in Russia as the inheritor and continuation of the Alexander Pushkin poetic tradition. The image itself is a translation of the sculptural forms more typical in the artist's itinerary: cast metal (bronze) and silk cords. These two elements, one soft and one hard, interact with each other by transferring the characteristics of one (element) to the other.
_{—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records}

Akhmatova's Monument is related to Barbara Chase-Riboud's poetry. It presents an idea for a sculpture honoring the much-admired Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, noting Akhmatova's use of nature as a metaphor for the political opposition she experienced as an artist and the suffering of the Russian people under Stalin.
_{—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records}  

Barbara Chase-Riboud is best known and celebrated for her abstract sculptures. Combining cast bronze with wrapped skeins of silk and wool, these wholly unique, over life-size works capture single moments in an endless cycle of transformation. Harmonizing various contradictory associations, they combine the vertical and horizontal, mineral and organic, male and female, heavy and light, rigid and supple.

Chase-Riboud’s work breaks from the traditional depiction of the figure in post-World War II European art. Through their complex materiality, her sculptures also allude to her artistic, cultural, and political experiences in North Africa, China, and the United States—in the latter, particularly in the context of the Civil Rights movement.
_{—Adapted from https://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/763.html, accessed 7-30-2021}