David

In this process of maceration and self-discipline Manzù automatically overcame the lure of beautiful material and alluring form (a danger always latent in his sculpture, even the most recent, because of the primordial sensuality of his temperament and the stupendous ease and vitality of his touch). In a certain sense his sculpture refused to be a statue, that is, refused the rhetoric of gesture, in order to concentrate on thoughtful meditation, on waiting. The David is like a ball of limbs wound in on themselves, waiting for a providential touch to unravel into the light, into the air (glorious or sorrowful?). The sculptor had already modelled a small David very similar to this one in 1938, even more closed and compact in its modelling