Barbara Chase-Riboud
b. 1939; Philadelphia, PA
Confessions for Myself, 1972
Bronze, paint, and wool
The title of Barbara Chase-Riboud’s bronze and wool sculpture suggests a self-portrait: the artist’s figure is armored and draped in mourning black. This work relies on the artist’s observations of textile, metalworking, and casting techniques she encountered in China, India, and Egypt. By combining hard and soft materials with references to the body in her sculptures from the 1960s and 1970s, Chase-Riboud created works that she described as “visually surrealistic.” Curator Peter Selz—who organized the 1967 Funk exhibition—commissioned this sculpture, which was featured in Chase-Riboud’s first one-person exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum.
