Persephone Unbound

1999

American, 1924 - 2020

For ancient civilizations a well-positioned stone created a connection to the cosmos, and left vital evidence of a human presence. A similar sense of timelessness and gravity is evoked by Beverly Pepper's monolithic Persephone Unbound. Persephone, Queen of the underworld, was abducted by Hades; when a rescue effort failed Hades fed her a pomegranate and she was bound to the underworld for a third of each year. Persephone Unbound suggests the ideal of freedom, while at the same time embodying the unchanging eternity to which Persephone was subjected.

Cast bronze

122 x 31 1/2 x 21 in. (309.9 x 80 x 53.3 cm)

Gift of Jon and Mary Shirley

2009.14

Provenance: Marlborough Chelsea, New York, NY; Jon and Mary Shirley, Medina, WA, June 2, 1999-2009

Photo: Paul Macapia

Now on view at the Olympic Sculture Park

“

I wish to make an object that has a powerful presence, but is at the same time inwardly turned, seeming capable of intense self-absorption.

”

Beverly Pepper

Resources

Exhibition HistoryNew York, New York, "Beverly Pepper, recent sculpture: Forms of Memory II", Marlborough Chelsea, April 10 - May 15, 1999

Published ReferencesCorrin, Lisa Graziose et al. "Olympic Sculpture Park." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 2007, illus. p. 53

England, Alice H., et al. "Assessing the Protective Quality of Wax Coatings on Bronze Sculptures Using Hydrogel Patches in Impedance Measurements." PDXScholar: Coatings 6, no. 4 (2016): p. 3, reproduced fig. a.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM