Deborah Bell (South Africa 1957-)
Bride Stripped Bare – Sarasvati

etching, pen, ink, acrylic and wash on paper

Artwork date: 2010/15
Signature details: signed, dated and inscribed 'Sarasvati' along the bottom
Exchange Rates*: USD 10858.03 – 16287.04
EURO 9867.30 – 14800.96
GBP 8303.91 – 12455.87

(1)

263 x 90 cm; framed size: 380 x 107 x 6 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Deborah Bell’s Bride Stripped Bare is a formidable work: monumental in size, rich in texture, and layered with meaning. The large zinc plate was initially created in 2010 in collaboration with master printer Jack Shirreff at 107 Workshop in the UK.[1] In 2015, Bell revisited and transformed the work through hand-painted interventions at David Krut Workshop, ahead of her first solo exhibition with the gallery, titled Renunciation. These added layers render each piece unique. Standing at an epic 2.5 metres tall, imposing in both scale and presence, this figure is both sacred and unsettling, an embodiment of Bell’s deep engagement with the idea of the artwork as a power object.

Bell has maintained throughout her career that art is more than representation, it is a vessel that carries spiritual weight, ancestral memory, and metaphysical resonance. Her process is intuitive and immersive, one in which meaning accumulates rather than declares itself.[2] In Bride Stripped Bare, this accumulation takes many forms: layers of ink, pigment, line and wash overlay the surface, just as myth, memory, and cultural iconography converge beneath it. The result is a palimpsest of time and presence.

The central female figure: solemn, upright, and commanding, stands atop a dark mass of fallen, perhaps bound bodies, suggesting layered narratives of power and sacrifice. Below, the name Saras Vati – a nod to the Hindu goddess of knowledge and creativity – is inscribed, joining a lineage of titles in the series that reference goddesses, queens and prophetesses: Isis, Sybil, Devi. These archetypes offer one layer of meaning, yet Bell’s reference points extend well beyond the ancient.

Deborah Bell adding hand-painting to the Bride Stripped Bare drypoints in the David Krut Print Workshop. Image courtesy of David Krut Projects

The title itself also invites immediate dialogue with Marcel Duchamp’s infamous The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. However, Bell’s interpretation is far removed from the mechanical detachment of Duchamp’s erotic diagram. Her bride is not passive nor abstracted: she is embodied, commanding, and deeply spiritual. Where Duchamp’s work is cerebral, Bell’s is visceral: imbued with flesh, history and psychic charge.

Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Batchelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6. Image courtesy of Tate

Bell's figures are not literal, however; they are vessels: part relic, part oracle. “I have a sense of having lived many lives on this Earth,” she has said. “When I walk through museums I am drawn to this greater memory of self which extends far beyond human existence.”[3] This notion of the self as an archive, layered through time, is mirrored in her multi-faceted process of intuitive emergence. As such, meaning in Bell’s work often arises through the act of making, rather than from a premeditated message. She becomes, in her own words, the maker, the material and the made, collapsing the boundary between artist and artwork.[4]

^{[1] David Krut Projects (2014). Deborah Bell hand-painting ‘Bride Stripped Bare’ at DKW. [online]. Available: https://davidkrutprojects.com/32544/deborah-bell-hand-painting-the-bride-stripped-bare-at-dkw.}

^{[2] Meer (2015). Deborah Bell. Renunciation. [online]. Available: https://www.meer.com/en/15202-deborah-bell-renunciation.}

^{[3] Ibid}

^{[4] Ibid}

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Hara Museum, Tokyo.; Museum of Modern Art, New York.; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town and Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.