Double Portrait of Nel and Henk Wiegersma 1930

Ossip Zadkine’s bronze, Double Portrait of Nel and Henk Wiegersma, is a solid mass of carved and moulded forms. It's a sculpture that makes you want to move around it, to consider it from different angles. The material feels weighty, permanent, like a monument; it’s rough, and marked, you can see the marks of the maker’s hands all over the surface. I love how the faces are simplified and flattened, but the texture of their hair is described with a kind of energetic scumbling, those wild curls. The sculptor’s process is there for all to see, but it also feels like this is a representation of an interior state, or maybe even a state of being in love. In some ways, this reminds me of the work of Jacob Epstein, another sculptor whose work is rooted in figuration but pushes into abstraction. Ultimately, what I enjoy most about this piece is the way it captures an emotion, it’s about the act of seeing and feeling, not just representing the world as it is, but making it anew.