July IV by Viola Frey was made between 1981 and 82. It’s a glazed ceramic sculpture, nearly 7 feet high by about a foot and a half in width and depth.

This is an over-life-size sculpture of a woman in contemporary dress. The sculpture is glazed in a range of bright colors. Shading and contour are created with color, giving the sculpture a painterly quality.

The woman is standing facing forwards, feet side by side, and with both hands raised to throat level.

She has thick curly jaw-length hair, and wears a small flowered hat perched over the center of her brow. Her skin color is yellow; wide dark eyes and pale pink lips are outlined in black. The nose is three-dimensional. Hair, face and neck are streaked with daubs of blue, brown and pink paint.

The woman wears a knee-length short-sleeved dress, belted at the waist. In color, it blends with the woman’s skin: yellow, with large areas of blue and orange in an abstract design. Her bare forearms are raised in front of her chest, with her hands flat. Her left hand is turned palm inwards, towards the throat. Her right hand is slightly angled so the palm is visible from the side: it’s bright orange in color, like the patches on the dress.

Streaks of dark blue run down the front of the woman’s yellow legs. They seem to flow down from the blue pattern on the dress, and form highlights on the shins.

She wears high-heeled blue strappy sandals, and her feet rest on a circular base, just big enough to hold them.