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Artist |
Pels, Marsha |
Object Name |
Outdoor Sculpture |
Title |
Lupa |
Date |
1998 |
Medium |
Cast patinated bronze on honed concrete columns |
Accession Number |
5817.0.0 |
Credit line |
Gift of the artist in memory of her mother, Ruth Pels (1917–2005) |
Audioguide |
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About This Work |
Located just at the entrance to the circular driveway of the Jacob Reingold Pavilion, Marsha Pels's sculpture Lupa consists of a cast-bronze figure of a she-wolf, set atop a pair of rough-hewn concrete columns, with two suckling putti. Created in 1998 and installed at the Hebrew Home as a gift from the artist in memory of her mother in 2010, visitors come upon the sculpture as if discovering an ancient ruin unearthed from an archaeological site. Lupa is part of a series of Pels's works that cast a critical eye on motherhood and its representation in art. Its inspiration is the she-wolf suckling the twins Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. The work symbolizes the interconnectedness between mothers and their offspring and reflects both Pels's curiosity about the bonds between animals and humans and her contentious relationship with her own mother. Pels is known internationally for her sculptures, which include a range of labor-intensive cast and fabricated objects, multi-media installations and outdoor site-specific pieces. Pels defines spaces within site-specific contexts in order to create poetically charged psychological landscapes. Lupa melds into the natural surroundings of the contemporary landscape as the wolf with head raised lifts a tangle of branches toward the limbs of an actual tree. Pels has discussed her use of bronze stating that it "is considered an archaic dead material," but it is particularly appropriate to her interest in making work that is about creating and "interpreting artifacts in a materialistic way;" it is "about patina, about aging things. Trying to make things look old and dug up . . . . " She doesn't want her work to look modern, instead it reflects her sensibility as a bronze technician, forging something beautiful, even if its subject is raw and difficult. |
Legal Status |
The artist or artist's estate retains all copyrights to their work. |