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George Segal

(The Bronx, New York, 1924 - 2000, South Brunswick, New Jersey)

Girl Sitting Against a Wall II

1970

Painted wood, plaster and glass

91 x 60 x 40 in. (231.1 x 152.4 x 101.6 cm)

Collection of the Akron Art Museum

Purchased with funds from the Fiftieth Anniversary Gala

1972.20 a-c

© The George and Helen Segal Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

More Information

George Segal used living models to create his sculptures. He wrapped them in plaster-soaked bandages and let the materials harden. He then cut the plaster away from the models’ bodies and reassembled the hollow forms. The result: Segal’s white figures seem at once lifelike and eerily still—forever frozen in a mummified state. Segal’s sculptural “environments” combine cast figures with commonplace objects—chairs, tables, signs and wall fragments— to evoke a specific emotion, memory or moment in time. However, the uniform coat of white paint he gives this tableaux suggests a distanced or other worldly reality. Slumped in her chair and staring straight ahead, this figure conveys a sense of exhaustion or boredom. Her unidealized nude form is not erotic but rather suggests a dejected psychological state.

Keywords
Monochromatic
Chairs
Contemporary Art
Nude
Sculpture
American
Female
Window