In the Alpine mountains of Rossinière, the sculptor and jeweler Harumi Klossowska de Rola lives with three wolves, a serval wildcat named Nelson Mandela, and a dog. Her walks in the Swiss wilderness help fulfill her appetite for nature’s mysterious ways, but a home life with animals lays the path to her enigmatic sculptures—psychological interpretations of living creatures. “I observe and draw them, but the works are never direct representations of the animals,” says Klossowska de Rola.
The 48-year-old artist is intrigued by the animal gaze, yet leaves out the eyes when she creates deer, wolves, snakes, and owls in bronze or alabaster: “I am not after grasping a sweet, nice, or aggressive quality—I want to give a whole range of emotions.” Klossowska de Rola does wonder, however, whether visitors to her exhibition “Sacred Woods,” opening today at the Palm Beach outpost of Acquavella Galleries, will remember her sculptures as having eyes. “You may assume a few of them are asleep,” she suggests.
Klossowska de Rola does not strive for plausible reality—no surprise, considering that she is the daughter of Balthus, a master painter of the 20th century. Her mother is the Japanese artist Setsuko Ideta, who refuses tamed ideals of nature. “She comes from a Shinto family who believed in animism, which I feel very close to,” says Klossowska de Rola. “I give power and respect back to the animals.”
The sculpture Daal (2022), for example, is a disarming deer-cum-deity; despite its hollowed-out body and empty eye sockets, its forehead is crowned with a gold-leaf crescent. Sleep is a more immediate homage in Athene Noctua (2022), a gilded bronze owl whose eyes remain tightly shut. “The biggest challenge is to remain minimalistic,” says Klossowska de Rola. She sticks to simple lines and a sense of weightlessness: “The work needs to feel heavy and powerful but also light at the same time.” Nanuq (2024), a towering bronze bear that reaches more than eight feet in height, suggests a massive airiness.
Klossowska de Rola began her career doing public relations for John Galliano, in Paris. She then moved into jewelry design, working for the likes of Boucheron, Chopard, and Van Cleef & Arpels. Sculpture found her a decade ago, when she was pushing outside the box with her jewelry: “I wanted to create objects that would not only be wearable [but] could live by themselves.” Encountering the Surrealist animal sculptures of the artist couple Les Lalanne was a turning point toward large-scale dimensionality. And a background in gems gave Klossowska de Rola an eye for the right materials. “I have always been interested in mixing different materials, like fossilized wood and gold.”
Whether it’s a series of alabaster cat busts or curvy serpents of bronze and gold leaf, Klossowska de Rola embarks on her own journey to discover the right foundry. “I am very obsessive and probably annoy all my collaborators,” she says, joking. The French bronze master Patrick Laroche has been her go-to craftsman since she first approached him with a simple animal sketch, and she eventually started taking courses from him.
A fascination with patina perhaps stems from her early childhood in Rome, surrounded by Villa Medici’s frescoes. “I like my sculptures’ natural patina, which comes with time,” she says. This requires patience, which reminds her of her father. He always took the time to read Klossowska de Rola’s favorite books—even if it was a Barbara Cartland romance. She cherishes a moment at age 11 when she asked her dad why he always painted the top of his figures’ heads flat. Balthus never fully answered the question, but Klossowska de Rola eventually learned the reason. That flatness, she tells us, was influenced by “the frescoes of Piero della Francesca.”
“Harumi Klossowska de Rola: Sacred Woods” is on at Acquavella Galleries in Palm Beach until February 23
Osman Can Yerebakan is a New York–based curator and writer
