Lika mutal biography of williams

Interview: Lika Mutal: Roots of Stone

Lika Mutal began her life as a sculptor in Peru in the seventies, and found here her source of inspiration.

In the garden of sculptress Lika Mutal's studio in Barranco is a stone which has not moved an inch for seventeen years.

For fifteen of those years she did not even make a mark on it. "I like to live with a stone a long time before I begin to work it," she says.

Today the stone, over a meter high, holds a smooth, carved channel with water trickling into it from a hidden source.

Much of the surface is rough, unworked.

1939: Born in the Netherlands.

A hole drilled deeply through the rock admits light from behind.

Like many of Mutal's pieces, this fountain stone seems deeply connected to the traditions of ancient Peru. Here, one is reminded of an Inca ceremonial artifact.

But she is reticent about this pre-Hispanic strain in her work. In fact, she avoided contact with it completely during her early years in Peru; after arriving in 1970, she resisted visi