Flagellated Woman

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1965 · Authors: María Belén Morales

This work created in 1965 by the artist María Belén Morales has been located since March 2024 at the Instituto de Educación Secundaria de Ofra, which bears the name of the sculptor herself.

Flagellated Woman is a work born from the friendship of the Tenerife-born author with the Polish artist Vicki Penfold (Krakow, 1918 - Puerto de la Cruz, 2013), whom she met at sessions they shared for drawing busts. It was there that María Belén Morales was struck by some tattoos on Vicki’s skin made during her imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. The Tenerife artist, deeply moved, created this medium-sized sculpture in artificial stone, adding three significant marks on the back of the figure, which bear witness to what she had seen on her friend’s skin.

The piece clearly fits into a period of artistic evolution for María Belén Morales, in her transition from figuration to abstraction, with the geometrisation of the human figure.

Flagellated Woman was donated to the educational centre by relatives of María Belén Morales, a visionary, tireless artist and spokesperson through her work for the fundamental role women have always played in society.

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