Reseña del libro "From the Neck up: Sculpture by Nicole Farhi (en Inglés)"
Nicole Farhi was born to Turkish parents in 1946 and brought up in Nice where her father sold rugs and lighting. She first gained public recognition during the 1980s as a designer of clothing, creating her eponymous label in 1982. For three successive years (1995-97) she won the British Fashion Award for Best Contemporary Designer. However, in the privacy, if not secrecy, of her north London studio, a spacious, rather damp converted greenhouse in woodland, she was sculpting portraits. Her highly individual sculptures are variously of writers, actors, artists, friends and intimate acquaintances. All are rooted in the European secular and figurative tradition demonstrating the prerequisites of fine sculpture: the sure sense of touch and the ordering of volume and surface. It would be misleading to say they are realistic. For they do not tally with our preconceived notions of what the head or torso should be. 'In almost every detail,' Kenneth Clark observed, 'the body is not the shape that art has led us to believe it should be.' Rather they are lifelike: they surprise us by subverting our expectations. In Farhi's distinctive sculptures there is character, presence, energy in abundance, the sense of the animalesque, tenderness and humanity. As you look at these transcendent objects, you will see the working of the sculptor's hands, mind, heart and aura made permanent. From the Neck Up accompanied Bowman Sculpture's 2014 exhibition of Farhi's work, and reveals her to be one of the pre-eminent British portrait sculptors to have emerged in recent times. Fifty photographs show off her stunningly expressive portraits, whilst Reg Gadney (painter, novelist, teacher and screen writer) situates them both in Farhi's biography and in relation to her major inspirations, Alberto Giacometti and her friend and mentor Eduardo Paolozzi. Sitters include both Paolozzi and Giacommetti, joined by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Judi Dench, and Bill Nighy.
