Iconic Life: Discovering Carole Feuerman

Looking to escape the summer heat in Rome, I wandered into Palazzo Bonaparte and was startled by a sculpture in the lobby: a woman, larger than life, in a bathing cap, seated in a yoga-like pose, balanced on a large, mirrored silver sphere. It convinced me to see the exhibit. The man at the ticket desk told me the artist was an American woman and the show had opened the night prior. He added that the artist herself might come back later that day.

I was intrigued. Little did I know that later that very day, I would have a chance encounter with the artist herself.

The exhibition, The Voice of the Body, was a sweeping retrospective of Carole Feuerman’s work, spanning more than five decades. It featured 1960s drawings, fragmented ballet figures from the 1980s, and breathtaking bronze swimmers. The lifelike figures seemed to float in the gilded Roman rooms, their eyes closed, their perfect skin painted in bronze and epoxy resin.