Brutalist Cast Stone Figural Sculpture, Signed H.A.V. III, Dated 1979

A monumental cast stone garden sculpture rendered in a deliberately primitive, brutalist idiom — a standing female figure with rounded, nearly featureless ovoid head, abbreviated arms, and a heavy columnar body cradling a dense cluster of fruit or shell forms at the hip. The surface is a layered symbolic program: a diagonal sash of clustered grapes or rosettes crosses the torso from shoulder to hip; a lattice or basketweave panel spans the belt zone; a pine cone — the Bacchic emblem of Dionysus — appears on the rear upper body; and a secondary mask-like face emerges from the lower drapery at roughly knee height, giving the shaft the character of a herm or term. Additional subsidiary figures are worked into the side mass. The square plinth is equally loaded — scallop shells, ammonite spirals, fan shells, and scored horizontal strata compress earth, sea, and geological time into the base.

The composition reads as a syncretic fertility and abundance column — the body itself is a stele, not merely a figure on a stand. The iconographic program draws on Demeter, Fortuna, and Artemis of Ephesus archetypes, layered with Dionysian botanical emblems and a cosmological base. This is deliberate, informed iconographic construction. Signed and dated at the base HAVIII / 79, the suffix suggesting a generational designation rather than an edition number. The piece carries the weathering signature of long outdoor display — iron-oxide staining bleeding down the white cementitious body and concentrating in the recessed carving — consistent with staff-noted minor signs of outdoor display.  The scale, weight, and iconographic depth argue for a trained studio artist working in the late-1970s neo-primitivist figurative revival.

CONDITION

Good overall with heavy iron-oxide staining and surface weathering consistent with extended outdoor display.  Heavy; requires two people to move.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall: 46" H × 14.5" W × 14.5" D
• Material: Cast stone / cementitious composite
• Signed: HAVIII
• Dated: 79 (1979)