Torso of a woman

With this sculpture, the work of Franco finds a new poetics consistent with more classicizing values, typical of the early 1920s. The body mimics tree trunks and in this ambiguity body / trunk is constituted as a metaphor for itself. The architecture of the well-balanced masses, almost hierarchically understood as pure sculptural values, bring him closer to Bourdelle, who will be his master among contemporaries, nevertheless the cuts that fragment the piece, especially that of the head, evoking an archaeological memory, still have Rodin's lesson in mind. Thus, the accident itself, as is the case with the protruding edges of the head cut, is integrated and participates in the sculptural values. This situation helps to focus the visual concentration on the body itself. The rough texture of the carnation vivifies the quality of the surface of the volumes and allows them a frontal refusal of nineteenth-century naturalism. The gently pointed breasts come to give a joviality to the body and veil the erotic assumption that can be guessed in the pose.