Poupées (Bodies Close By)

In the realm of art, the term poupée—French for doll or puppet—is inextricably linked to the work of the Surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902–1975). From 1933 and over the following sixteen years, Bellmer portrayed La poupée —a doll headless in one shot and mutilated in the next, dismantled and reassembled with a sadism matching the dark, unsettling eroticism it exuded.
It is a body of work that reveals the potential for a point of convergence between the artist’s abstract and figurative output, perhaps unveiling the first stirrings of a new phase of artistic exploration.
Chiara De Blasi