"elefants" Sculpture

Donatella Richtman Cinquini
By Ute BenJosef

The Spirit of the Eternal Feminine

Her sculptures have an indescribable attraction. They arrest the observer, and leave an abiding impression. Donatella's art is essentially focused on the human figure. She combines the aesthetic tradition of her native Florence with the multi-layered humanism of her Jewish psyche. What makes her work new and fresh is the feminine spirit, already emergent this century by Chagall.

Symbolic Work

The representation of a Pregnant Woman becomes the representation of pregnancy itself: the woman sits in full girth on the floor, her face reaching up to the whole universe, taking and receiving the endless mystery, carrying life within her. The cercle, the sphere - the "great globe itself" - becomes the symbol of perfection. The distress of a child is transmuted into the distress of his mother, encompassing him with her sympathetic presence.

In the spirit of the archetypal feminine, Donatella is also creator of fountains. In them, the cycle of birth, life and death is united into a whole. The Zurich City Council has commissioned one of these fountains for the Leimbach cemetery.

Spectrum

Donatella Richtman Cinquini was born in Florence in 1948. Both her parents came from artistic families - most notably, her uncle was the Tuscan painter Mose Levi. Her mother, who provides encouragement and inspiration, was also an artist. Thus not only a name, but a presentiment of her destiny and life's mission were conferred on her by birth. Then the family moved to Haifa, where Donatella grew up and studied. Her career as a sculptress began in Italy, through work with master sculptors in the artistic centre of Bottega Versiliese, in Pietra Santa, where she still has her studio.

Besides sculpture Donatella expresses her art in other forms like platinum and diamond jewellery. She created a notable series with the characteristic title "Woman and Moon" for the firm Meister-Design in Zurich.

Over a period of twenty years, Donatella established herself as a sculptress in the international arena of visual arts. Numerous exhibitions bear witness to her prestige and fame. Donatella leads a cosmopolitan life travelling and working in Ireland, Israel and Switzerland.