Human Forest (Forêt humaine)
1 of 2
Object Label
Ossip Zadkine, known primarily as a modernist sculptor, made this gouache of metamorphosing, interconnected human-plant figures after he returned to France from New York, where he had fled in 1941 after the Nazis seized Paris. When the Museum purchased it, he described the circumstances around its creation in a letter to the curatorial department: “When I returned back in October 1945 I found France in a pathetic state, to say little. . . . . I was a sculptor with no house, no workshop, a . . . sort of a D.P. [displaced person]. The human forest seemed to me strange and hostile and inhospitable. I went to the country where I have a house, the only one left to me where I did a group of drawings and gouaches representing this flora of today.”
Caption
Ossip Zadkine French, born Vitebsk, present–day Belarus (former Russian Empire), 1890–1967. Human Forest (Forêt humaine), 1946. Opaque watercolor, pen, and black ink over graphite on wove paper, sheet: 36 × 22 in. (91.4 × 55.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 47.111. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.47.111.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Human Forest (Forêt humaine)
Date
1946
Geography
Place made: France
Medium
Opaque watercolor, pen, and black ink over graphite on wove paper
Classification
Dimensions
sheet: 36 × 22 in. (91.4 × 55.9 cm)
Signatures
Signed and dated bottom right: "O. ZADKINE 46"
Credit Line
Museum Collection Fund
Accession Number
47.111
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
Copyright for this work may be controlled by the artist, the artist's estate, or other rights holders. A more detailed analysis of its rights history may, however, place it in the public domain. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Have information?
Have information about an artwork? Contact us at