Alicia Penalba. La sculpture entre terre et ciel

Three years after the exhibition Chana Orloff. Sculpter l’époque, the Zadkine Museum once again invites visitors to (re)discover the work of an important 20th-century sculptor. Alicia Penalba (1913-1982), an internationally renowned artist, was born in Argentina but spent most of her career in France.

The Zadkine Museum, the first museum in France to dedicate an exhibition to her since her death, was the perfect choice to pay tribute to the artist who made her debut in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Zadkine's sculpture class.

Alternating chronological sections and thematic discussions, the exhibition places Penalba's work in the artistic context of the 1950s-1960s. It explores the connections she forged with other artists, such as Zadkine of course, but also Brancusi, Picasso, and Matisse.

It focuses on Penalba's totemic works, which combine monumentality and verticality, highlighting the role of nature as a driving force for creation.

Penalba, marked in her childhood by the Argentine landscapes, constantly referred to them to invent sculptures with biomorphic forms evoking desert plants.

Alicia Penalba's interest in decorative arts, her desire to adapt her sculpture into different mediums – ceramics, tapestry – and in various sizes, from monumental to miniature and jewellery, is the other common thread of an exhibition that reveals an independent and talented creator who considerably renewed her art.