The Poet - Ossip Zadkine

Canadasquare
,
8300 Knokke-Heist

About the artwork

Five copies of the bronze sculpture ‘The Poet’ were cast, including one to be installed in New York. This sculpture from 1963 delicately depicts 'the singer of freedom'. The poet holds Orpheus' lyre to his chest. An unfinished sculpture, somewhat like a torn plant full of verses, it incorporates Paul Eluard's poem ‘Liberté'.

About the artist

Zadkine, who was born in the Russian city of Smolensk, studied drawing and wood engraving in England from a very young age. Despite being inspired by Cubism, especially by the fragmentation of  bodies and an almost musical rhythm, he is fundamentally an Expressionist. With his larger bronze works, he evolved towards a more open style, always balancing between the abstract and the classical, between matter and feeling.