Yearning. Kneeling Female Nude 1930 - 1937

Svend Rathsack made "Yearning. Kneeling Female Nude" out of plaster, can you imagine him there in his studio working away? There’s a real tension here. You can see it in the way the figure twists and bends, in the contrast between the smoothness of the skin and the rougher texture of the plaster. Her hands rise to hold what? The curve of her arms is echoed in the set of her head looking up. The light catches the planes of her body. I’m drawn to that sense of touch, it's like Rathsack is thinking, feeling, and seeing all at once. It feels very physical. I think of other sculptors like Rodin who explored similar themes of desire and longing, but there's something so uniquely personal here, isn't there? Maybe Rathsack was trying to capture something fleeting, something intangible. There’s a sense of yearning, of course, but maybe also a sense of hope, of possibility. We can all relate to that, can’t we?