Penelope's Bed (Split) Sculpture

Born in Wroclaw, Poland in 1947. She studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz's studio in 1966-1972, graduating in 1972. Besides sculpture, she practices drawing and photography.Barbara Falender's all work is devoted to the human body that she commemorates in fragments or combinations of figures. Her sculptures of the 1970s are beautiful stones yielding beautiful bodies full of natural sensuality and conveying the joy of living rather than suffering. Their spontaneity and inner dynamism result from the artist's virtuoso handling of traditional techniques and materials, in which she makes use of structures and colours of multifarious stones, at times combining them with bronze casts offering different potentialities of texture and colour. (Hanna Kotkowska-Bareja)I have found myself in immersing my hands in clay. When I was touching it drying on my skin I was descending to the deepest hidden instincts in myself. Splinters and metallic particles getting under my fingernails while taking the clay out of the box sometimes gave me painful pleasure. Today when I start with a sculpture I begin by opening the box with clay. When I look at it I always feel the same anxiety and curiosity. The sound of the hammer hitting the chisel and the response of the stone bring about thoughts which fill the time in which I live.I am sticking to the earthly matters: it is with these matters that I have struggling to articulate my thoughts found the justification for my work. The memory of the pleasure that I have while working propels the energy which enables me to go on.
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