Hans BELLMER - The spinning top (about 1937-1956)

 

The spinning top

about 1937-1956
Oil painting on canvas (65x65 cm)
Tate Gallery, London

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The subject of the work is a skeletal female figure spinning a top, held in her bony hands. Bellmer's idea was to make a sculpture that symbolized the woman's power to turn men's heads and hearts, while she herself whirls in zero gravity. Undoubtedly, we are faced with a work with a strong disturbing character.

This painting has undergone many reworkings by the author, who only signed the painting in 1956 when he found an interested buyer.

Bellmer was of Polish descent and moved to Paris in 1938, a time when she joined Surrealism.

This work represents many features of Surrealism, such as the distortion of the image that appears to float in a space that could represent the artist's subconscious.

The reference point of Hans Bellmer's art is the female body, very often treated in an erotic way, almost obsessively. By the same artist, we usually know his articulated female mannequins, almost fetishistic "dolls", and his drawings made with superb technical precision.

Comparing artists: Brauner, Dalí, Delvaux, Ernst, Matta, Tanguy