Geometric Totemic Wooden Sculpture, Italy, 1990s

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Geometric Totemic Wooden Sculpture, Italy, 1990s.

Two angular wings frame a central core of vertical blades cut in a wave profile, on a small block base. The openings in each wing and the rhythm of the central strips give the piece a symmetrical, almost ceremonial presence. Seen from the side, the blades open into a layered section, with darker and lighter passages, small pores and old marks on the surface. The totem is a recurring form for Bertolotto, an Italian maker working in the 1970s, who treated it less as a religious object than as a way of stacking geometry into a standing figure.