Michel Seuphor wrote: “Intelligent and passionate, Penalba is unquestionably one of the most brilliant figures in contemporary sculpture in Paris”.

The work of Alicia Penalba is self-referential in nature, since although it is considered to be abstract, it is sensitive in tone, born from a synthesis of shapes borrowed from nature but her work is difficult to categorise. There are some traits of informalism in the brutal materiality of the rustic bronzes, the textured bases and wall supports, as well as characteristics of the dematerialisation of art in the ethereal lightness she obtained with polyester resins. Her work includes elements drawn from Surrealism and post-war existentialism, in relation to her interior world, the mysticism of her doubles and her cathedrals that refer back to the Gothic, from psychoanalysis in totemism and in the mysterious ancestral world which includes a kind of search for simplicity. Her synthesis of superfluous things is drawn from pre-Colombian art, African art, the gestural qualities and dynamism of Japanese calligraphy, naturalism, and the constant search for beauty in all the things of this world.