Beverly Hills Installs Love Anatomy Sculpture

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Beverly Hills just welcomed a new resident: an eight-foot-tall, thousand-pound woman made out of bronze. On Monday, the city installed Love Anatomy, a bronze sculpture by Romanian American painter Alexandra Nechita.

The sculpture, an abstract, Cubist woman that Nechita hopes will make viewers "viscerally feel the power of connection, of love," will be placed on the west side of the Burton Way median opposite three other sculptures. Love Anatomy is latest addition to the city's public art collection of nearly 100 pieces.

Nechita is a world-famous artist who has been called a "petite Picasso" because of her Cubist style. She was a child prodigy who held her first art show at age eight, at a Los Angeles public library. By age 11, she had already put on 16 solo exhibits of her paintings and sold at least $1.5 million, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times entitled "Alexandra the Great."

At 12, she was commissioned to design the program for the Grammy Awards, and she later designed a U.N. peace monument in Singapore. Her works have been purchased by Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Alec Baldwin, Melissa Etheridge, Whoopi Goldberg, Calvin Klein, and many others.

Nechita said she wants Love Anatomy to represent female power and love. "I hope that in looking at her, they see themselves, their mothers and daughters, sisters and friends, that they see all females, enveloped in the power that we are!" she told the website sweetyhigh.com.