With aesthetic influences anchored in the Flemish Renaissance, Christian iconography, mythology, and European cultural tradition, the work of Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere is characterised by the creation of distorted and striking figures, drawings, and sculptural compositions made from wax moulds, animal skins, hair, textiles, metal, and wood. The body, a recurring and central element, is highlighted in the dualities of strength and fragility, danger and protection, love and suffering, life and death, summoning up in the viewer a latent psychological terrain between discomfort and tenderness.

- No Life Lost II
, 2015, is an impressive sculptural work consisting of three horses stacked and lying inside a showcase. The result of the continuation of works developed for the WWI Museum in Ipres, Belgium, this work portrays the vulnerability of these animals, traditionally associated with power and strength, and used as a resource in the First World War. The glass case, an object synonymous with the protection and preservation of precious items, protects (as well as constrains) these wounded bodies, which are notoriously exposed to pain. Dead and helpless, the first horse rests directly on the platform and the second, shapeless body appears above it. In turn, the third horse, the one furthest up, still seems to retain a residual movement in the way that, helpless - since there is a buckle constraining its forelegs - it struggles inside the shop window and “pushes” on one of the doors. The bandaging of the face allows these victim-bodies to collect themselves, and, as a whole, seems to establish a temporal - frame
that combines power and defeat, end and transformation. This scenario of tension, in which the spectator is a witness, exposes the romantic idea that establishes the link between beauty and wonder.