Persephone Unbound

Date1999

Maker Beverly Pepper 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.

Object number2009.14

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

Photo CreditPhoto: Paul Macapia

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

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

Credit LineGift of Jon and Mary Shirley

Dimensions122 x 31 1/2 x 21 in. (309.9 x 80 x 53.3 cm)

MediumCast bronze