2011.60
Rondo
Artist
Deborah Butterfield
(San Diego, CA, 5/7/1949 - )
Title
Rondo
Creation Date
1981
Century
last half 20th century
Dimensions
77 in. x 101 in. x 35 in. (195.58 cm x 256.54 cm x 88.9 cm)
Classification
Sculpture
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
barbed wire, metal rods and wire
Credit Line
Gift of halley k. harrisburg and Michael Rosenfeld
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2011.60
Horses have long captured the literary and artistic imagination. For the sculptor Deborah Butterfield, horses served initially as a type of symbolic self-portrait. As she has explained, “I first used the horse images as a metaphorical substitute for myself–it was a way of doing a self-portrait one step removed from the specificity of Deborah Butterfield.” Her early horses were made from clay and sticks that she picked up at her home in Bozeman, Montana. Over time she utilized other found materials, including different types of metal. In Rondo, barbed wire and metal rods form both the armature and the body of her subject.