Ruta Jusionyte – Mr Buck – Sculpture

Mr Buck bears twisted horns and powerful limbs.

As with her other sculptures, Ruta Jusionyte begins with raw clay, shaping the body until it acquires an almost physical presence. The deeply carved eyes capture our gaze and reflect us back to our own animal nature. In mythology, the goat often symbolizes vitality and fertility; here, the artist gives it a meditative posture that subverts these traditional associations.

The sculptor is fascinated by metamorphoses in which animal-headed figures embody instinctive forces and repressed emotions. She draws inspiration from tales and legends where the wolf is cruel, the fox cunning, or the bear powerful. Within this fantastic bestiary, Mr Buck becomes a figure of balance between strength and contemplation. The textured surfaces and vibrant colours invite the viewer to “touch” the material with their eyes and to project their own stories into the work.

Faithful to her discreet sense of humour, Jusionyte gives this faun a faintly ironic smile, as though he had just played a trick on the viewer.

Over the years, Ruta Jusionyte has developed an immediately recognisable body of work at the crossroads of Neo-Expressionism, Symbolist Romanticism, and Magical Realism. Born in Lithuania in 1978, she now lives and works in France and has established herself as a significant figure on the contemporary European art scene, blending expressionist intensity with symbolic romanticism.

Her work explores the relationships between humans and animals. Her hybrid sculptures reveal a fascination with fragility and strength, innocence and bestiality, always infused with a discreet touch of irony.

Winner of the Académie des Beaux-Arts Prize in 2019, Ruta Jusionyte is now highly sought after by collectors drawn to deeply embodied painting and sculpture, where emotion and visual intensity meet.