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Critics consider Spoon Woman one of Gicaometti's first mature sculptures. It is a large (just over five-and-a-half-feet tall) bronze semi-abstract figure of a woman. The head, legs, and bust are set in severe, cubist-influenced angles, but the hips are presented as a flattened ellipse, which indeed looks very much like a spoon. The ceremonial spoons used by the Dan culture of Africa-the bowls of which are often equated with wombs-were a major influence on the piece. African sculpture in general was very popular among Western artists in the early part of the century, and Giacometti's deft blending of cubist and African motifs, shows that though only in his mid-twenties, he was fully conversant in the sculptural language of his day. The piece is also interesting in that it exemplifies the two main-and often opposing-modes he would explore throughout his career--the abstract form and the human form. In Spoon Woman, he managed a witty, synthesis of the two by abstracting a characteristic of the woman's shape and using it as a visual pun on women's roles as nurturers and providers. In essence he used abstraction to emphasize the humaness of the figure. However, the synthesis so achieved was tenuous, and soon after completing Spoon Woman, he abandoned human forms almost entirely for a period of nearly 10 years.
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