Dave Dell'oso, 2003
Fiore De Henriquez
Fiore De Henriquez (1921 - 2004) was a respected and prolific figure in post-war sculpture. Her work revealed a keen eye for expressing the character of her subject, yet she herself remained something of an enigma. It was only in the last few years of her life that she revealed that she was, in fact, a hermaphrodite.
Brought up as a girl in pre-war Italy, Fiore discovered her androgyny at puberty when, as well as beginning menstruation and developing breasts, she discovered that she also had male genitalia. She kept this a secret and, though she always felt more male than female, she always referred to herself as a "sculptress," channeling her prodigious energies into her art.
She saw the creative process as a metaphor for her own duality: "I begin to embrace a piece of clay; it is soft and pliable, all feminine. Then it goes hard, and is cast in plaster, virile and rigid. Next it is made all feminine in wax, all pliable once more, to be caressed and stroked. Then masculine again in bronze, hard and solid. All the time, you must think: will you leave something feminine, or make it more masculine; how will you shape and finish it?"
It's possibly this struggle between the warring sides of her nature that gave Fiore de Henriquez's art its vitality and extraordinary diversity.
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