Colossal Fragment

“The much larger head right across from Die Kop really catches you! I love the placement of those two among the trees facing each other.”
–Harriet Lewis

In his expressive sculptures, Lionel Smit focuses on the residents of Cape Town, South Africa, creating portraits both representational and abstract. He frequently presents the women of the Cape Malay community as subjects. Smit cites Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol and Lucien Freud as influences, in his works, for their use of “the human portrait to create something extraordinary.” Often working at monumental scale, his sculptures evince this blend of naturalism and abstraction, with their heavily modeled and fragmentary surfaces.