Woman 1949

Reg Butler made this sculpture, Woman, from bronze, and the way it's put together, it's almost like a drawing in space. The surface has this lovely roughness, a kind of dark, matte finish that feels both ancient and modern, and makes me think of Giacometti. Look closely, and you can almost feel the heat and force that shaped the metal. It makes you wonder about the artist’s hand, the way they wrestled with the material, and how each mark, each weld, contributes to the overall feeling. There’s something about the elongated torso and the abstract head that reminds me of a Cycladic sculpture, but also, it's very much of its time, looking forward. It's this tension between past and future, abstraction and figuration, that makes it so compelling. Art is just such a long conversation, isn’t it?