Shepherd of the Landes 1951

Germaine Richier made this sculpture, Shepherd of the Landes, and I can only imagine the many hours she labored over it. It’s this dark bronze color, rough and textured, and looks like it might disintegrate at any minute. The figure itself is almost skeletal, hoisted up on these impossibly long, spindly stilts. I’m thinking about Alberto Giacometti who was doing similar things, but it's like Richier is pushing further into this raw and existential space. What was she thinking as she worked the wax, or whatever she used, building up and scratching away at the surface? Did she feel a sense of urgency to create a figure so fragile and otherworldly? And then the title, Shepherd, is odd. There's a protective element, but also the isolation of the shepherd out there in the landscape. Making a sculpture like this is an act of reaching out, it's a conversation across time. And now we're part of that conversation too.