The city destroyed 1951

Ossip Zadkine's sculpture embodies a moment of intense destruction and loss, with a haunting, abstracted figure rendered in bronze. I can almost feel the weight of the artist's hands shaping and molding the form with this heavy, earthy material. The artist's struggle is palpable in the figure's anguished posture, the arms reaching skyward in a gesture of despair. The artist might have been thinking of the aftermath of war, of the countless lives shattered and cities reduced to rubble. What does it mean to carve out the emptiness at the core of the figure, the void that speaks to the absence and devastation wrought by destruction? The rough, textured surface of the bronze seems to mirror the roughness of the world, evoking a sense of vulnerability and rawness. The way Zadkine uses bronze is incredible – it has a certain life of its own, transforming the sculpture into something deeply emotive. Artists are always trying to say something to the future.