This work brings the tradition of bronze sculpture into the contemporary era. Exaggerated forms and disjointed body parts transform the human figure into an elegant and haunting metaphor of discord and tension. But the seemingly strange configurations—hands holding heads, an elongated leg supporting a torso via its head, a leg evolving into an arm whose hand reaches out—convey a poignant sense of the fragility and persistence of life. One senses a rebuilding from loss as graceful forms animate the surrounding space. In the fall of 2018, these sculptures were added to Woodmere's grounds as part of the exhibition, Expressionism in Bronze: The Sculpture of Viorel Farcas.
Viorel Farcas lives in Philadelphia, but he was born and raised in Romania. He trained as a sculptor at the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where renowned artist Constantin Brancusi had studied several decades earlier. During that time Romania was ruled by Nicolae Ceaușescu, under whose oppressive regime Romanians suffered repeated food shortages and endured many injustices and restrictions. Farcas’s work expresses the anguish of life in a repressive state and the hope for a better future that dwells in the human spirit.
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