Lot’s Wife

In the face of a terrifying event, one can freeze into immobility. This work, conceived in the style of a crystalline form of cubism  was created just after the Holocaust.  The Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.  Only Lot and his family were spared and commanded:  “flee for your life! Do not look behind you”. [Genesis 19:17] But Lot’s wife did look back and saw the devastation and she  turned into a pillar of salt. Metamorphosis and change of state, which run through Wald’s entire oeuvre, here assume a special monumentality of the form and its construction into crystal shards. Lot’s wife is caught in the midst of a  process of transformation, reminiscent of Bernini’s  Apollo and Daphne (1622/25) in Rome, Galleria Borghese.