Above all, it is to the woman and mother that Nivola gives the most sublime consideration, developing them until they become the absolute form, pure idea. She is the rule and the governing principle, she is the secret of life. The male is multifaceted and complex because he lacks this primordial virtue. To express the male’s tortuosity, Nivola turned to cubism. But the forms that represent the mother are so rarified, they verge on the metaphysical. Materiality is as if sublimated in them; only hints of her pregnant belly, her breasts, and the opening of her whole being in a reassuring embrace remain. She is a warm reception, protection and deliverance: She has wings for the flight of her children and a nest for their return. She is the one, the simple origin. There remains only one term to define her: superhuman. And superhuman is the vision that represents her. An heavy material that becomes a wafer of light.  She is your mother—the archetype of the Mediterranean mother and the mother of us all.