About the Artist: Berlinde De Bruyckere

Berlinde De Bruyckere’s sculptures are figural and disfigured; her anatomically detailed animal and human forms lack certain appendages or—more often—heads, to disturbing effect. De Bruyckere believes the particular presence or absence of a head is irrelevant because “the figure as a whole is a mental state.” The artist, who had a gory childhood fascination with Lucas Cranach the Elder, began her career in the 1990s and was immediately drawn to figurative works. In her earliest pieces, De Bruyckere used woolen blankets and furniture as her primary materials, purposefully suggesting the absence of the human body. Her later works replicate, exaggerate, and fictionalize bodies, most iconically featuring horses on platforms or in vitrines, and human figures partially transformed into branches.

Image courtesy of Mirjam Devriendt