Sutee Figure II

Manuel Neri’s work was forged in the lively environment of postwar San Francisco, a center of innovative art and ideas in the years following World War II. During this time, debates over the relevancy of abstraction versus figuration were prevalent in artistic and academic circles. Neri’s sculpture can be understood within this context and is often considered a three-dimensional response to the so-called Bay Area figuration, championed by Richard Diebenkorn and other painters. Suttee Figure II is one of the artist’s earliest works. Neri experimented with cheap and accessible materials, creating a series of writhing figures out of gauze, wire, and string. The work’s title refers to an obsolete Hindu practice of self-burning by a widow mourning her deceased husband.