STELLA SHAWZIN | Athlete I
Bronze
211 x 200 x 137 cms / 83 x 79 x 54 inches
There is remarkable energy and a passion for life in the muscular male figures Shawzin portrays. Their bronze forms are always well composed and one senses a tension that impresses the eye in these soaring figures that seem to defy gravity. Shawzin’s characteristic acrobats are composed in a particularly dramatic manner, amazingly balanced on top of one another holding on from hand to foot. In other sculptures of men we see athletes with outstretched hands reaching to the sky and with feet stretching backwards, only the toes of one foot touching the ground. These figures seem to be in almost impossible positions and yet they are convincingly real. Their soaring images fly in the sky and yet at the same time they stand on the earth.
The success of art in the landscape depends not on contrast, but on conversation. A sculpture should make you feel the land more intensely, not distract from it. - Martha Schwartz (b. 1950)
Best known for her monumental sculptures that seem to defy gravity despite being made of bronze or marble, Stella Shawzin created a fascinating body of work that shines a light on the secrets of the human form with great detail and tenderness.
Shawzin worked on both a monumental and an intimate scale. Regardless of their size, all her sculptures are sensual expressions of the human form, a celebration of its full range of movement.
Throughout her career, Shawzin worked with a variety of media – bronze, marble, metal, wood and was intimately involved in every stage of their creative process. From her visits to the marble quarries at Carrara, to the building of her own foundry at her Cape Town studio, Stella Shawzin oversaw the execution of each artwork from conception to completion.
Shawzin passed away in 2020, at the age of one-hundred, leaving an incredible sculptural legacy as a key practitioner of South African modern art.
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