The Ludwig Museum houses the plaster sculpture “Girl Putting up her Hair” made by George Segal in 1967. This work was part of the series where Segal depicted the daily routines of ordinary people.

George Segal had his own unique method of sculpturing: he wrapped a model in plaster-impregnated gauze strips to make forms of body parts and then put them together in life-sized figures. After that, the artist manually processed the surface to make it rough and textured.

Segal strove to render the beauty of everyday life and emphasize the things that remained unnoticed in the whirl of daily routine,

Segal chose not to outline the details of the “Girl Putting up her Hair”. With no color of the eyes, skin or hair, there is practically nothing known about the model. The only thing that has color in this composition is the chair that the figure is seated on. This work reflects the artist’s contemplation on the difference between essence and existence. By essence, George Segal meant a person’s name, nationality, education, marital and social status, etc. Existence is what is left once the aforementioned is taken away, and that is what captivates the artistic interest of Segal. The fact that people can realize the inevitability of death is what makes them different from animals.

George Segal is an American artist and sculptor who was born in New York in 1924. He attended art classes at the Cooper Union and Rutgers University. In the 1950s, he took up creating life-sized wire and plaster figures of people. In the early 1980s, Segal directed his attention to plaster cast still lifes of fruit and bottles.