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1935», bronze brown patina, A. Rudier founder, Paris Espace Tajan, Paris. A fine bid for a work by Germaine Richier who was one the major French female sculptors of the first half of the 20th Century. Richier studied at the school of Fine Arts of Montpellier from 1920 and came to Paris in 1925 where she worked under the direction of Antoine Bourdelle before she opened her own studio in 1929. She worked and taught in Zurich between 1939 and 1946. Richier took part in many collective exhibitions in France and abroad and was awarded the Blumenthal prize for sculpture in 1936 as well as the first prize of the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1951. Her works produced during the first years of the 1930's remained somewhat traditional before she decided to prolong Bourdelle's teaching in order to fetch her own style. She started to choose themes from the world of her childhood in Provence from 1940 breaking away from classical forms, producing insects and animals and showed the following year her «Torso I», the first work in which she left open the construction armature. In 1946 she produced a series of spider sculptures figuring the web with a network of wires which were to become a characteristic component in her works such as in the «Griffu» and the «Ant». Germaine Richier thus expressed her aversion for flatness and fullness by creating tormented sculptures with deep anguish. She then mixed human figures with animals abolishing the borders between them in a Surrealistic manner where human forms are amalgamated with mud, plants and stones. After the dropping of a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima she then created humanoids as in «Storm, 1946», a much deformed and mutilated sculpture expressing the shortness of life. Germaine Richier thus seemed more attracted by skeletons and broken bodies than by normal human beings and tried to associate sculpture and painting from 1951 as in the «Toupie», «La Ville» or «L'Echelle» created against backgrounds painted by her friends, notably Zao Wou Ki, Hartung or Vieira da Silva. At the end of her career she assembled most of the creatures she had previously created and placed them on a large chessboard with their main pieces painted. These slim creatures always on the verge of falling give the impression to stand still and to move altogether. She also created non-polychromatic works such as the Bullfight in 1953, the «Gaunt mask of the Eagle» in 1954, the «Grain» in 1955, the «Warriors» and «femmes Coqs» as well as «Don Quichotte», the «Horse with seven heads» and the «Shepherd of the Landes on his stilts». Germaine Richier thus prolonged the tradition of the masters who created fantastic worlds, such as Hyeronimus Bosch, James Ensor or Max Ernst and surely influenced many sculptors of the second half of the 20th century such as César. |
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