Untitled (from the series White Nights)
Artist name
Artist year born
1903
Artist year deceased
1992
Artwork make date
1955
Artwork material
wood engraving
translucent paper
translucent paper
Artwork dimensions
height: 17cm
width: 11cm
width: 11cm
Artwork type (categories)
Print
Accession method
Donated by Alex Gama 1995
Accession number
69:2-1995
Label text
The figure of a young woman with two faces on her breast refers to Nastenka, heroine of Dostoyevsky's story, who longs for love and romance and for a way of escaping from her suspicious grandmother. She dreams of the young man who promised to return to her and in her loneliness she confides in the narrator whom she meets by chance, late at night beside the canal. Abramo represents her anxious dilemma as the sparkling face of her first love is partly overlaid by that of her new acquaintance, but her hieratic stance and diaphanous veil suggest that it is marriage (and, in the position of the hands perhaps also motherhood) that is her overriding concern.
Valerie Fraser
Valerie Fraser
Last updated date
2009