Daphne 1958

Ossip Zadkine's bronze sculpture presents Daphne's metamorphosis with raw immediacy. You can imagine Zadkine wrestling with the clay, carving out these angular, almost violent forms. I can feel the tension in this piece, the push and pull between human and nature. Those branches, like grasping fingers, seem to both imprison and liberate Daphne. Was Zadkine thinking of Cubism, maybe Picasso's fractured figures, as he worked on this? Or was he channeling some ancient, primal energy? Look at the rough texture of the bronze, the way it catches the light, almost like bark. It feels like the sculpture itself is in a state of becoming, forever caught between one form and another. That's the thing about art – it's never really finished, is it? It keeps changing, evolving, just like us.