The Mantis

The Mantis is Germaine Richier's second piece representing a woman-insect, realized just after The Spider I and the The Bat. Germaine Richier used real insects as models for her sculptures, stating that they enabled her to give a part of truth to all of her sculptures, even the most imaginative ones. The Mantis has often been considered as a symbol of feminism because of the insect's well-known male-cannibalism. This theory may be confirmed by the artist's friendships with members of the French intelligentsia, such as Colette or Nathalie Sarraute. With her work, Germaine Richier appears as belonging to the continuum of Surrealism after the Second World War: the monstruous and hybrid figures are typical of surrealist works, which used the subconscious as a source of inspiration.