작품 상세

Bronze. Height 44 cm. On back of plinth signed 'Fautrier' and with the founder's annotation "ALEXIS Rudier Fondeur PARIS" as well as the cast number "1/6". - With fine brown patina. Engelberts 1 with full-page illus. Exhibition New York/Cologne 1998 (Galerie Michael Werner), Jean Fautrier, cat. no. 6 with full-page colour illus. (other cast); Berlin 1998 (Galerie Michael Haas), Jean Fautrier - Das Frühwerk, cat. no. 9 with full-page colour illus. (other cast) Literature Edwin Engelberts, Jean Fautrier. Oeuvre gravé, oeuvre sculpté. Essai d'un catalogue raisonné, Geneva 1969, no. 1 with illus. Jean Fautrier grew up in London, but was conscripted by the French military when he was very young, and severely wounded in 1918 - having already been accepted to study art at the Royal Academy in London at just 14 years of age. After a lengthy period of hospitalisation, he eventually rented a studio in Paris. Jeanne Castel was a keen promoter of his works and showed them to the public for the first time in her husband's garage. Later, she curated his works in a catalogue raisonné project. The art dealer Paul Guillaume also provided him with a contract. The present sculpture "Nu aux bras levé" was made in this early, successful period. In 1927, Fautrier also received a commission for illustrations from the Gallimard publishing company. He was allowed to choose the subject himself and opted for the "Inferno" chapter from Dante's Divine Comedy. "It was a decisive time, in the course of these works, the elements of Fautrier's paintings became condensed into rhythmic symbols, colour emancipated itself and gained a high level of autonomy. [...] Energization of forms and substantiality of colours only appear at first glance contradictory: Both tendencies lead to an exciting general gain in autonomy for the various visual elements in Fautrier's work. This also applies to his female nudes, although in this field the development from the depiction of a concrete individual to a transpersonal image appeared to begin much earlier and possibly even to emerge from this point. [...] In view of the increasing corporeality and, subsequently, plastic quality of colour in Fautrier's painting in the time around 1927 to 1930, it seems only natural that he also began to work in sculpture at this point - bronze casts of plaster models." (Matthias Bärmann, Jean Fautrier zum 100. Geburtstag, in: Cat. Haas, Berlin, op.cit., n.p.)