Morceaux choisis selected works

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Morceaux choisis Selected works

Morceaux choisis Selected works

GALERIE JEAN - FRANÇOIS CAZEAU

PARIS-FRANC E

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Morceaux choisis Selected works

GALERIE JEAN-FRANÇOIS CAZEAU - PARIS-FRANCE

Préface Jean-François Cazeau is proud to present in this catalogue a selection of works included in his presentation at Art Monte-Carlo 2018. The exhibition aims to represent in the best of it’s ability the high-level art that the gallery deals in throughout the calendar year.

Anchored in the first half of the 20th century, it is also important for the gallery to showcase some of the masters of post-war and contemporary art, which are continuing to build art history, as the impressionist and modern masters did half a century before them.

In this year’s hanging, Picasso and Giacometti will be put in dialogue with Kusama and César, Herbin and Hartung will showcase their different but essentially complementary abstraction, the Americans Joan Mitchell and Philip Guston will accompany the Art Brut of French artist Gaston Chaissac, and the surrealist lines of André Masson’s bronze will come complement de drawings of Modigliani and Gauguin.

The exhibition also brings to light the different techniques that have made up the 20th century artistic landscape: Oil, Acrylic, Gouache, Pencil, Watercolor, Canvas, Paper, Linocut, Bronze, Iron, Wood, Ceramic... All come together to demonstrate how artistically rich the century was and how these masters always pushed the boundaries of their respective mediums further.

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Table of contents CĂŠsar

p 07

Paul Gauguin

p 15

Alberto Giacometti

p 21

Philip Guston

p 25

Hans Hartung

p 29

Auguste Herbin

p 33

AndrĂŠ Masson

p 39

Amedeo Modigliani

p 45

Pablo Picasso

p 49

Niki de Saint Phalle

p 57

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César 1921 - 1998

CESAR (1921 - 1998) Hibou Ailé, 1982

Bronze 102 x 184 x 63 cm / 40.2 x 70.4 x 24.8 in.

Signed “César” on top of the base Boquel foundry

Provenance

Private collection, France

Exhibitions

Avallon, Centre Culturel de l'Yonne, Biennale de la Sculpture, Collégiale Saint-Lazare, Salle Saint-Pierre César, 30 dernières années de son œuvre, June-September 1987, reproduced in color

Bibliography

Avallon, Centre Culturel de l'Yonne, Biennale de la Sculpture, Collégiale Saint-Lazare, Salle Saint-Pierre, César, 30 dernières années de son œuvre, June-September 1987, reproduced in color J-C. Hachet, César ou les Métamorphoses d'un Grand Art, Editions Varia, Paris, 1989, reproduced in color, n°138, p. 70 (similar edition) César, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, 1947-1964, tome II, Denyse Durand-Ruel, 1994, Editions de la Différence

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CESAR (1921 - 1998) Moteur n° 3, 1893 - 1894

Welded iron 36 x 57 x 27 cm / 14.25 x 22.5 x 10.63 in.

Signed “César” on top of the base

Provenance

Hanover Gallery, London Bo Boustedt, Nice Galerie Beaubourg, Marianne et Pierre Nahon, Paris Galerie Ferrero, Nice Private collection, France

Exhibitions

1960 London, GB, Hannover Gallery Pers, Cesar Recent sculptures 1961 New York, NY, USA, Saidenberg Gallery, Pers. César Sculpture 1953-1961 1973 London, GB, Gimpel Fils, Master sculptors of the 20th century, n°20 of the catalog

Bibliography

Exhibit catalog Hannover Gallery, London, n°9 Exhibit catalog Saidenberg Gallery, New York, n°15 Exhibit catalog Gimpel Fils, London, n°20 César, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, 1947-1964, tome II, Denyse Durand-Ruel, Editions de la Différence, n°323 1960 1961 1973 1994

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In the 1980’s César will reminisce the welded iron pieces that he created in the 1950’s and starts casting some of them into bronze sculptures. This is the case of Hibou Ailé, which was originally welded by César in 1955, but becomes one of his most impressive bronze sculptures in 1982.

Impressive in size and allure, the Hibou Ailé has the appearance of a hybrid owl about to take off with the power of his strong and open wings. The owl is an important part of the artist’s bestiary.

In 2018, César is posthumously honored with a retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou, celebrating the artist as one of the biggest contributor to 20th century sculptor worldwide. Now well represented in museums across the world, notably the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Engines are fascinating subjects in César’s production, for the simple reason that they probably did not start out in this form. In the work of César, from 1955 to 1965, there was a strong dominance of zoological and anatomical subjects.

As Renaud Bouchet explains in his book Les Fers de César, “if one can a priori exclude that a nude or an animal has for example become, during the invention, a Relief or a Drawer, or whether a Relief or a Drawer has become a Nude or an Animal, one can, however, very well imagine that Figures, Wings, or Imaginary Animals gave rise to Engines, a series of seven achievements (three in 1959, four in 1960) sharing formal zoological characteristics with a certain number of insects, gallinaceous or even Baldaccinian birds”. This will become even more true when Moteur n° 3 becomes the inspiration for a work created by César in 1980, La Poule Andrée, which was casted in bronze and made into an edition of 8.

La Poule Andrée, 1980, 55 x 65 x 30 cm, bronze, edition of 8.

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César, born of Italian parents in Marseille, is remembered as one of the most important sculptors of the second half of the 20th century. He grew up in one of the poor districts of Marseille before moving to Paris in 1943 to attend the L’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. As a young artist, with very few resources, he finds his material in the street, and goes to the scrap yards to picks up what he can. From there begins his history with scrap metal.

“When I was young, I thought I would become a sculptor like Michelangelo, like Maillol, like Giacometti.

A sculptor, originally touches earth. Then, I realized that there had been Gonzales, Picasso... there are a lot of people who used iron, it was not new. What was new was rather the recovery of scrap material.”

The possibility of using the foundry, and using recycled materials therefore creates new situations, which allowed César to manufacture large works.

By tinkering with the iron rods that serve as reinforcement for the plaster sculptures, he realizes that this material is more interesting than the one he wanted to cover it with.

Admittedly, he is not the first to use iron: Gonzalez and Picasso, among others, preceded him. But he will innovate the medium, thanks to a technique imported from the industry: the arc welding, which allows a flexibility that his predecessors did not have. Rather than beating the iron when it's hot, he can literally model it. “It's simple,” he said, “I can solder a needle to an anvil.” It is also inspired by existing objects. Picasso saw a bull's head in the assembly of a saddle and bicycle handlebars. César seizes the curvature of a stovepipe to form the body of his Rooster of 1947. An ax iron becomes thenhead of the Warrior of 1949.

When Daniel Abadie, during the retrospective devoted to the artist at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1997, asked him if this type of transposition was not simply inspired by this plastic inventiveness of Picasso, the sculptor replied: “It's not that at all, because the sculptures I made in Villetaneuse are not found objects, it's still scrap metal…”. Pierre Daix, one of the best specialists of Picasso goes further by asserting that Caesar creates “in three dimensions the equivalence of what is the key in painting”.

César quickly becomes famous. His welded iron pieces are sought out by many collectors. He gets invited to the Venice Biennale in 1956, exhibits at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1957, and receives awards and medals in London and Brussels in 1958. In 1959, he participates in the second Documenta of Cassel with three sculptures. Then risks everything by exhibiting his automobile compressions at the Salon of May 1960. He later explains to Bernard Blistène, during a retrospective in Marseille in 1993: “I wanted to do with the machine what I was doing with my hands... (...) I only let the machine do what my hands could not do.” And there too, he was the first.

He defined himself as unconventional and will continued throughout his artistic creation to explore formats and techniques. “I go where the wind takes me” and “I hate the ease” are sentences he will repeat in several interviews.

Not much of a calculator, he explained that the “things” he made were not premeditated, they were lived, meaning that these works are experiences, instantaneous moments, impulsive inspirations.

What he is, however, is an inventor. Inventor of the compressions, the expansions, and of the finger prints.

He had a passion for materials, and for getting his hands dirty. Whether he influenced John Chamberlain, or was influenced himself by the American, is not as important as to realize the importance that these two artists have in art history of sculpture in their respective countries.

Starting in the 1960’s and the compressions, César will slowly accept the idea of abandoning working with his hands. That exact concept makes his welded iron pieces of the 1950’s that much more important.

These assemblages of metal represent the core revolution that César will implement to the world of contemporary sculpture. Using scrap metal, and representing objects as ordinary as an engine or an insect, desacralizes sculpture in itself. Of course Duchamp cannot be forgotten as the forefather of these concepts, but it is interesting to understand the vision that César had in the 1950’s. César embodies in his art a lot of what revolutionary artists of the early 20th century where trying to accomplish: Randomness, impulsiveness, unusual materials, new techniques, automatism, these are all ideas that were juggled with by many movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Futurism...One might say that he was actually the first contemporary sculptor, the one to embody all the ideas of his predecessors, while taking it a step further, by pure instinct.

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Paul Gauguin 1881 - 1973

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PAUL GAUGUIN (1848 - 1903)

Tahitian Woman and Idol, 1893 - 1894 Pen and brown ink with grey wash on paper 34.9 x 24.8 cm / 13.75 x 9.75 in.

Signed with the artist stamp on the lower left “P GO” Certificate of the Wildenstein Institute, 03.14.1997 To be included in the forthcoming revised edition of the Catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Gauguin

Provenance

(Probably) Galerie Druet, Paris Private collection, New York (purchased around 1930) Sale, Christie's New York, May 15, 1997 (lot 214), purchased by the current owner Private collection

Exhibitions

Gauguin, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland, June 10 - November 22, 1998, n°106 Gauguin, Maker of Myth, London, Tate Britain, September 30, 2010 - January 16, 2011, n°78, repr. p. 142 Gauguin y el viaje a lo exótico, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, October 9, 2012 - January 13, 2013, n°61, p. 188, rep.

Bibliography

John Rewald, Gauguin, Paris, Hyperion, 1938, repr. p. 20 (L'idole, aquarelle) John Rewald, Gauguin Drawings, New York, 1958, n°87, repr.

Ronald Pickvance, Gauguin, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 1998, n°106, pp. 237, 244, 282, 288, repr. p. 164

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The composition describes a young Tahitian in profile sitting on a sandy beach beside the representation in foot of the Polynesian goddess Hina. The two figures, although distinct, are united by a foliage frame executed in gray wash. The flattened technique and the compartmentalized composition here are very evocative of that of the Japanese prints.

Also in this watercolor are the stylistic effects of the woodcuts executed by Gauguin for Noa Noa on his return from his first trip to Tahiti (1893-1894). In this now famous travel tale, the artist described his own experience of Tahitian culture and life.

As John Rewald (1958) has already pointed out, this watercolor can be related to Arearea no vanta ino, or The Amusement of the Devil (NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, inv. n° 1832, W.514) two figures, upside down and with some slight variations, occupy the whole left part of the composition. This painting, signed and dated 1894, is dedicated to Marie-Jeanne Gloanec, the patroness of the pension of the same name where Gauguin and her painters friends used to stay at Pont-Aven.

Detail of the work: Arearea no vanta ino, 1984, detail 60 x 98 cm, NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhaguen

The subject of the elbowed woman seated with her legs folded appears regularly in the work of Gauguin.

As early as 1889, it can be found, for example, in The Kelp Harvesters (Folkwang Museum, Essen, W. 349) and then reappears, represented in different angles, in works dating from the first trip to Tahiti and later years. The most significant examples are: Women of Tahiti (Sur la plage), 1891, (MusĂŠe d'Orsay W.434); the frontispiece project for Noa Noa, ca. 1893, (Sale of the Scharf collection, Sotheby's London, 3/12/1991, lot 21); La Sieste, 1892-94 (Annenberg Bequest, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, W. 515); in Arearea no varua Mo (mentioned above) and finally in the famous Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?, (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, W. 561).

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The goddess Hina (literally meaning “Girl”) is present in different forms in Maori culture and mythology in both Polynesia and the southern Pacific.

In Tahiti, it is defined in the writings of Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout (1797-1879), Consul of France in Papeete, as the goddess of the Moon, the first woman and the mother of man.

It is the female part of the main deity Maori, the male part being Taaroa. They are both complementary and from their union is born all that makes up the universe. Hina also symbolizes fertility and is often associated with the representations of women painted by Gauguin in Tahiti, particularly that of his companion Teha'amana. She also appears in his Self-portrait to the idol, ca. 1894, preserved at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio.

Hina fascinates Gauguin. As Pickvance wrote in his catalog of the 1998 exhibition at the Giannada Foundation “of all the Tahitian divinities, it is she who dominates her work in all techniques (eleven paintings, four engravings, six sculptures).” Because there were few traces of indigenous culture in this colonial Tahiti, Gauguin created his image of the goddess from his reminiscence of the Maori sculptures seen at the 1899 Paris Universal Exhibition (in particular their large faces with flattened features) and his knowledge of the relief sculptures of Java (with full and rounded shapes).

In 1892, shortly after reading the book of Moerenhout, Hina appears for the first time in the wooden sculpture of Gauguin. In the watercolor, the figure of the goddess can be compared with the sculpture of private provenance exhibited at the Giannada Foundation in 1998 both inscribed with her name and that of the initials of Gauguin. She shows Hina in the same frontal position, her arms on the side, hands parallel to the ground, her luxuriant hair also adorned with a moon-shaped jewel, or perhaps a pearl. She is also represented in a similar pose in the wood engraving Te atua (The Gods) of 1893-94 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1948.262).

We find her again in another grey watercolor, which also belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, proving the interest that Gauguin showed in this specific technique. The presence of a similar work in such an institutional collection is proof of the importance that this period and technique represents in the artist’s artistic creation.

Rewald and Pickvance both date the watercolor of the period following the return of Gauguin from his firs trip to Polynesia, ca. 1893-1894. This work is a poetic interpretation and a silent evocation of this primitive mysticism which Gauguin was so attracted to in Catholic Brittany and in Pagan Polynesia.

Parau Hina Tefatou (Words between Goddess of the Moon and God of the Earth), 1893-1894, 34,9 x 24,8 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA

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Hina, detail of the work: Tahitian woman and Idol, 1893 - 1894, pen and brown ink with grey wash on paper, 34.9 x 24.8 cm

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Alberto Giacometti 1901 - 1966

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ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901 - 1966) Deux femmes nues debout, 1963 Blue and black ballpoint pens on paper 18 x 11.6 cm / 7.08 x 4.56 in.

Provenance

Diego Giacometti Nelly Constantin Johnny Constantin Private collection, acquired from the above in 1994

References

Certificate of authenticity delivered by the Giacometti Committee, Paris, Sept. 2013 The work is registered by the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation under n°AGD 2778

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Alberto Giacometti’s drawing oeuvre documents the artist’s lifelong effort to represent visual perception, or “rendre ma vision,” as he famously declared. The psychological and philosophical implications of that statement underlie what his close friend Jean-Paul Sartre identified as the absoluteness in Giacometti’s art. Drawing allowed Alberto to engage in an intimate relationship with his subject, while his sculpture explored the physical and emotional spaces between, and thereby the separation of, the viewer and the viewed. In this drawing the ballpoint pens scrawls give vigorous definition to the female bodies and exerts a powerful presence.

Alberto's brother, Diego, met Nelly Constantin in 1936, at the Dôme in Paris. At first, the brothers Giacometti shared the same cramped quarters. Even after World War II, when Alberto was married to Annette Arm, and Diego, who never married, was living with Nelly, they resided only a few blocks apart, and their studios were always side by side. Diego and Nelly stayed together about twenty years. After their separation they remained friends, and Johnny, Nelly's son, will assist Diego in his studio until his death.

According to Nelly Constantin, this drawing would represent her with Annette.

Alberto Giacometti in his studio.

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Philip Guston 1913 - 1980

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PHILIP GUSTON (1913 - 1980) Accord II, 1963

Gouache on paper 76.8 x 101.6 cm / 30.25 x 40 in.

Provenance

Estate of the artist McKee Gallery, New York Private Collection

Exhibition

Philip Guston: Works on paper, May 2, 2008 - August 30, 2008, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

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Philip Guston, born Philip Goldstein in 1913, is one of the most important artists to come out of the New York school. First living in Montreal, then in California, Guston will quickly enroll in the Manual Arts High School where he will befriend Jackson Pollock. Guston will quickly feel concerned about the social issues of his day. Some of his early works will take on very political attributes, protesting and accusing racism and discrimination. In the 1930’s this appetite for social and political stands will take him to Mexico, where artists are experimenting with revolutionary mural painting. There he will create, along with Reuben Kadish, the impressive The Struggle Against Terror, influenced by the work of David Siqueiros. He will spend time with Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera, before first returning to California, and in 1935 move to New York City to join Pollock, in what will become the first generation of abstract expressionists.

Accord II, work created in 1963, has strong elements of the works made in the 1950’s. A black and red block is centered inside of a mass of gestural strokes floating within the picture plane. Inspired by the Impressionists, but also by the Hudson River School, Guston uses a relatively limited palette, where one can find pastel colors such as pink, light grey, white, purple and red.

One might look at his works from the 1970’s, which he has become internationally renowned for, and understand the rupture with his abstract works of the 1950’s and 1960’s, but one must not miss to see abstraction throughout Guston’s complete artistic production. The artist’s involvement with the abstract expressionists was fundamental in developing his own style, and in a larger sense the New York School style.

“The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.”

Philip Guston.

The works of the 1960’s started by a series of works in the style of Accord II, foreshadow a new found need for Guston to gain back some figuration. The abstraction turns more geometrical, more logical.

It is the transition period. Throughout the late 1960’s and in the 1970’s Guston’s style will definitely shift towards a more figurative approach. He leaves New York and settles down in Woodstock in 1967.

Often referencing the cartoon style which took him back to his early years, these works will continue to explore issues of race, discrimination, and racism, which are not only rooted in the early works that shaped him as a young artist, but also in the burden of the holocaust, which he experienced far away from the battlefield, but deeply resonated in his conscience, as a Jewish American.

One might look at his works from the 1970’s, which he has become internationally renowned for, an understand the rupture with his abstract works of the 1950’s and 1960’s, but one must not miss to see abstraction throughout Guston’s complete artistic production. The artist’s involvement with the abstract expressionists was fundamental in developing his own style, and in a larger sense the New York School style.

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Hans Hartung 1904 - 1989

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HANS HARTUNG (1904 - 1989) T1964-E8, 1964

Acrylic on canvas 65 x 81 cm / 25.5 x 33.9 in.

Signed and dated on the lower left “Hartung 1964”

Provenance

Private Collection, London Galerie Odermatt-Cazeau Private Collection, Europe Galerie Jean-François Cazeau This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist, currently being prepared by the Hartung-Bergman Foundation

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In 1961, Hartung began a new aesthetic phase, he starts using a new spraying process and does not hesitate to scratch his canvas. He also makes his brushes himself: large brushes, pistols, brooms, hoses and typography rolls. All these tools, all these techniques that have gone into his production, are always at the service of expression and emotion. This beautiful canvas illustrates it perfectly.

It's a musical chord, a waterfall, a violent breath, all at once. It reveals incredible strength and amplitude, a balance in the imbalance.

T1964-E8 does not refer to the visible world, to reality. Hartung was a painter who was afraid that the text would encroach on the realm of the image, as his painting had to refer only to itself. Hartung does not want to influence or impose anything on the viewer. The interpretation must be free.

The horizontal canvas has several colors on its surface: at the top, it is painted in blue, an important color of Hartung's artistic language, and at the bottom of the work, it is a purple hue, painted in acrylic.

The distribution on the canvas is not available for us to see because these first layers are then covered with another layer of black, on most of the canvas.

The titles chosen for these works are inscribed in time and allow a very precise cataloging of his work undertaken during the lifetime of the artist: “T” for canvas, number indicating the year of creation, “E8” referring to the tool or the technique used.

The specificity of the technique that requires the preparation of a background, a superficial layer and finally the actual intervention of the artist, contributes to “delay” the execution of the canvas. In this work, it is through the subtraction of matter that the form becomes visible.

In this painting, we find important symbols for Hans Hartung. The features created by the artist's scratching echo another great German master of the 20th century: Max Ernst. Indeed, one thinks of the surrealist artist's forests produced especially in the late 1920s.

Hans Hartung was born in Leipzig on September 21st, 1904. As early as 1922, he reached abstraction in a series of watercolors where black lines and colored spots already appeared. In 1924 and 1925, Hartung studied classical literature, philosophy and art history in Leipzig and attended a lecture by Kandinsky.

He enrolled in 1925 and 1926 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden where, on the occasion of the International Exhibition, he discovered the path of French painting, from Impressionism to Cubism.

He met Anna-Eva Bergman, a young Norwegian painter, whom he married in September 1929. In 1931, after a stay on the Côte d'Azur during the winter, he exhibited for the first time in Dresden, and with Anna-Eva Bergman the following year in Oslo. In 1935, threatened by the Nazi regime, he was forced to return to Berlin, then to Paris where he settled permanently. There he meets Kandinsky, Mondrian, Miròand Calder.

The artist participates in the exhibitions of the “Salon des Surindépendants”. Separated from Anna-Eva, Hartung will become close to the sculptor Julio Gonzalez, and his daughter Roberta. In 1939, he joined the Foreign Legion and married the sculptor's daughter. Seriously wounded during the war, he lost his right leg in 1944. Frustrated of not having been able to work during the war, Hartung returned to work in 1945 by multiplying experiments and different treatments of the canvas. He paints canvases composed of suspended areas of colors, covered with bundles of calligraphic lines. From 1949 he began to enjoy international recognition and took part in many important exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Munich and Basel.

He meets Soulages, Rothko, and Mathieu, and is recognized as one of the leaders of informal art.

The 1960’s marked the consecration of Hans Hartung's informal art. Biennial of Venice, exhibitions, retrospectives, Hartung is one of the most important artists of the French and international scene.

This period is analyzed by Jean Clair in the catalog of the exhibition dedicated to Hartung at the Maeght Foundation, in 1971: “Another essential difference: no desire to affirm the plan of the picture, to reduce the two-dimensional space, but on the contrary to make that the canvas becomes the chosen medium of a deep surface carrying transparencies where the symbols, through a substantial thickness, will infiltrate and, from one to the other, recognize themselves or the opposite, distance themselves.” By this new method, Hartung creates a tension between a permanent background and calligraphic graphics that come to furrow and break its harmony.

Max Ernst, The Forest, 1927 - 1928, oil on canvas, 96.3 x 129.5 cm The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

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Auguste Herbin 1882 - 1960

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AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882 - 1960) Eros II, 1948

Oil on canvas 100 x 73 cm / 39.33 x 28.8 in.

Signed and dated on the lower right: “herbin 1948” Titled on the bottom left n°894 of the catalogue raisonné

Provenance

Collection Kouro, 1967 by descent Mme Kouro, 1983 by descent, Private Collection

Exhibitions

Hambourg 1953, Volkerkunst Museum Art abstrait géométrique, 2017, Galerie Jean-François Cazeau, Paris

Bibliography

G. Claisse, Herbin. Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Editions Du Grand-Pont, Lausanne, 1993, n°894 Art abstrait géométrique, des origines aux réalités nouvelles, autour de la collection Kouro, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Jean-François Cazeau, Paris, 2017, p. 113 (reproduced in full page). Study for Eros I, p. 112 (reproduced in full page)

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Motivated, rigorous, and intolerant to mediocrity, Herbin is from a young age a very dedicated painter.

After spending two years at the Beaux-Arts in Lille, he moves to Paris in 1901, at only 19, to continue his progression independently. Impressionism, fauvism, cubism, Herbin will conquer all of the movements of the early 20th century. The artist will very early on understand the importance of color and geometry in painting. Some of his still lives of 1905 will even announce the soon to come cubist revolution.

Throughout his early career, Herbin will be in constant search for the ideal geometric composition.

However, shapes are not the only concept that he will learn to master.

Throughout his brief interest in fauvism, Herbin becomes an excellent colorist and learns to harmonize color in his compositions. When finally cubist, Herbin has a hard time letting go of his experimentation with color. Arguably the two most important developments of the 20th century, color and abstraction, will eternally compete in Herbin’s artistic creation.

This interest in color, and his refusal to let it go, will cost him an important place in history as one of the inventors of Cubism, letting Picasso and Braque claim all the fame. It is often forgotten that Herbin exhibited a cubist painting, shown in between works of Picasso and Braque at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908.

In 1916, after two years of serving his country during the war, Herbin will sign his first contract withLeonce Rosenberg, beginning a long professional and intimate relationship between the two men. The year 1917 will mark Herbin’s leap into full abstraction, letting go of any perspective or distinct background. As Malevitch is heading the Russians into Constructivism and Freundlich is organizing the first Dada exhibitions in Cologne, Herbin is moving further into complete abstraction. In the same spirit as Malevitch’s Architektons, Herbin will realize a series of Relief Polychrome, representing 3D geometrical sculptures in color.

In 1927, after years of continuous self-examination, a short step back into figuration, and numerous experimentations with abstraction, Herbin is finally ready to fully commit himself to what will become his artistic language. Not as focused on geometry as he once was, he focuses on curves, and the continuous harmonization of color. Geometry will make its way back into his works in the early 1930’s, leading to the creation of the movement Abstraction-Création in 1931.

Nature Morte aux Roses, 1905, oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm

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“The painting can only be movement (...), end and beginning (...). The value of expression attached to the curved line is universal. Abstraction creates science, abstraction creates the arts. The movement embraces everything. Nothing is (…) independent at all, in volume, in line, in plan, in color.”

Auguste Herbin, Abstraction-Création, n°1, p.19

Malevitch, Architekton Gota, 1923, plaster, 85.3 x 56 x 52.5 cm

To understand the rest of Herbin’s production it is important to understand the journey that brought him there. Throughout his life Herbin was disciplined, serious, applied, and in constant reflection. In the artist’s mind, he owed to the arts, and to society, to give painting his all. It was not only his career, but his purpose, his role. In 1943, Herbin claims to have finally found his way. Geometric Abstraction is born.

The artist will create an alphabet, based on color codes that he puts in place, and claims that within the constraints of his new language, he has never felt so free.

From then on, before most of his paintings, Herbin will draw in pencil the shapes that he wants to represent, and notes the color in which each shape will be painted. The study for Eros I, is a perfect example of Herbin’s careful planning.

Eros II embodies all the elements of Geometrical Abstraction. It was purchased by one of Herbin’s most loyal supporter, Jack Kouro, who became one the most important collector of Geometric Abstraction, and a close friend of Herbin.

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The name Eros comes from Herbin’s newly established languaged: E: red - spheric form R: light blue - combination of spheric forms and triangles O: green - combination of spheric forms and triangles S: dark blue green - combination of spheric forms and triangles “The painter will give no importance to the opinions of historians, writers, critics, whose profession, even the best exercised, does not authorize them in any way to provide advice, lessons, criticisms, instructions on a trade completely different from the one they exercise, on research they can not completely understand.

The harmful influence of the literary is exerted particularly on abstract works, non-figurative, non-objective works, as well as figurative works whose outrageous deformations are arbitrarily interpreted with meanings absolutely foreign to the plastic art, attributing to these works intentions that can not withstand serious scrutiny” - August Herbin Herbin is one of the few painters of the 20th century, alongside Mondrian, Malévitch and Picasso, to have continuously searched for new ways in which to improve painting. Fundamentally abstract, he never abandoned color, and stayed true to his “purpose”, leaving behind a strong legacy in abstraction, and a completely new artistic language.

Study for Eros I, 1948, pencil on paper, 35 x 24 cm, Galerie Jean-François Cazeau

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AndrĂŠ Masson 1896 - 1987

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ANDRE MASSON (1896 - 1987) Duo Amoroso, 1939

Bronze, Numbered 7 / 8 55 x 84.6 x 32.3 cm / 21.6 x 33.3 x 12.7 in.

Foundry mark: Ateliers O. Brustolin, Vérone et Brustolin, and editor’s stamp Galerie Due Ci, Rome Casted in 1987 by Ateliers O. Brustolin in an edition of 11: n°0/8 for André Masson, n°1/8 to 8/8, n°EA 1 and EA 2

Provenance

Galeria Due Ci, Rome Galerie Odermatt-Cazeau, Paris Private Collection

Exhibitions

Villa Médicis, Rome, André Masson L’insurgé du XXème siècle, December 1989 - January 1990, reproduced in the chapter “Sculptures” Exhibition André Masson œuvres maîtresses, December 5, 1990 - February 2, 1991, Galerie Odermatt-Cazeau, Paris, France André Masson, Mytohologie of Nature, September 18, 2004 - June 30, 2005, Museum Wurth, Künzelsau, Germany André Masson, La Sculpture Retrouvée, Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, June 3 - September 3, 2017, Issoudin, France

Bibliography

Roger Passeron, André Masson, Catalogue général des sculptures, Il Quadrante, Turin, 1987, p. 88, n°7 André Masson L’insurgé du XXème siècle, de décembre 1989 à janvier 1990, Villa Médicis, Rome, reproduced in the chapter “ Sculptures ” André Masson œuvres maîtresses, December 5, 1990 - February 2, 1991, Galerie Odermatt-Cazeau, Paris André Masson, Mytohologie of Nature, September 18, 2004 - June 30, 2005, Museum Wurth, Künzelsau, Germany, reproduced p. 57 André Masson, La Sculpture Retrouvée, Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, June 3 - September 3, 2017, Issoudin, France, reproduced p. 17

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André Masson, born on January 4th 1986, is a major figure of the surrealist movement and considered one of the fathers of automatism, and a strong influencer of the abstract expressionist movement which was born in New York during the 1940’s. Masson’s career as a surrealist will truly take shape in 1922, after his move to the Atelier Blomet, which will become to the surrealists what the Bateau Lavoir was to the cubists. His close contact to Joan Miró will take Masson’s artistic production to an irrational level, one that he had not reached before. A couple years later, Masson will become one of the most important artists to sign with the Galerie Simon, gallery of the famous dealer Henri Kanhweiler.

Masson’s involvement with his dealer, and the artists of the gallery, notably Juan Gris, will keep cubism essential to Masson’s early surrealist works. With the likes of Joan Miró and Max Ernst, Masson will always push the boundaries of experimentation, integrating various techniques, material and support into his production. In 1927, Masson will begin experimenting with sculpture, using terracotta, argyle and plaster.

The catalogue raisonné of the sculpted works of the artist count twenty six works, including Duo Amoroso, which was first created in 1939, but not casted until the 1987.

Encouraged by the gallery Due Ci, in Rome, André Masson will take a look back at his sculptures in the early 1980’s and decide to devote his time to the production of bronze casts of his sculpted works. From that initiative was born enlarged versions of the artist’s works, complementing what had been one of the richest production of any artist of the 20th century. These works were presented by the gallery in the late 1980’s in Rome, followed by exhibitions in Cologne and Auxerre dedicated to the artist’s sculpted works. In 2017, the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch payed a tribute to Masson’s sculptures to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the artist’s disappearance, in which Duo Amoroso was again well presented.

Masson’s sculptures represent an important part of the Galerie Jean-François Cazeau’s identity. Indeed, at the time of the production of the bronze casts, the Galerie Odermatt-Cazeau, co-directed by Philippe Cazeau, Jean-François’ uncle and one of the most influential Impressionist and Modern Parisian art dealers of the second half of the century, financially supported the production of the sculptures and dedicated an important exhibition to some of the artist’s most important works.

In this exhibition, which took place in 1990 and 1991, the gallery included a cast of Duo Amoroso, arguably one of the strongest of Masson’s sculptures.

The sculptures of André Masson are often born from his drawings, as is the case for Duo Amoroso.

Study for Duo Amoroso, ink on paper, 13,7 x 65 x 20,5 cm

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Masson’s sculptures are fascinating as they do not exist independently in his production. Throughout his entire career, one can find references to his sculptures in works of other mediums. Whether it is in works on paper or works on canvas, references to the sculptures appear and reappear, mixed with a surrealist language, colors, and his automated compositions. It is as if Masson imagines sculpture to be an integral part of his two dimensional works. One the best examples can be found when looking at Hotêl des Automates, a work started in 1939, in which the sculptural form of Duo Amoroso can be found as the basis for one of the central figures of the work.

Hotêl des Automates, 1939-1941, oil on canvas, 71 x 92 cm

The importance of sculpture in Masson’s artistic production is not to be overlooked. Traditionally sculpture took a back role in surrealism as a whole because surrealists thought of sculpture as a heavy and well thought out process, rather than a light, impulsive and unconscious production. Recent exhibitions, texts, and studies are now showing how essential sculpture actually was to some of the surrealist artist’s, notably Max Ernst, Joan Mirò and André Masson.

“Another discovery for me: love at first sight, at the Metropolitan Museum, in front of two sculptures from India, two Aspara, figures. I was very impressed by the twist of the bodies, their fusion with nature, with the trees. These two sculptures had the effect of a revolution; they confirmed to me what I had always felt: never to separate man from nature.” - André Masson In the catalogue dedicated to the exhibition of Masson’s sculptures at the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, in Issoudin, in 2017, Didier Ottinger, a curator and specialist on surrealism explains that: “Having transposed the automatism of his drawings to painting, Masson took on an additional challenge by applying it to sculpture. Tracking the fluidity that is that of thought, the free association of forms and images that characterizes the writing of magnetic fields or the Cadavres Exquis drawings, the work can have no other title, other than Métamorphose.”

Métamorphose will indeed be the title of Masson’s first sculpture, created in 1927.

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Amedeo Modigliani 1884 - 1920

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AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884 - 1920) Caballero, 1916 Black lead drawing

42.2 x 26 cm / 16.63 x 10.25 in.

Signed and numbered on reverse “12/150” Stamped “Haligon” on the reverse (sculpture, art casting)

Provenance

Madame Foujita (Youki Desnos), Private collection, Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris, Private collection

Exhibitions

Lugano, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Amedeo Modigliani, March 28 - June 27, 1999, n°23, repr. p. 178 Traveling exhibition: France and Italy Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, Modigliani, L’ange au visage grave, October 23, 2002 - March 2, 2003, cat. n°XXVII, repr. p. 266 Milano, Palazzo Reale, Amedeo Modigliani, L’angelo dal volto severo, March 21 - July 6, 2003, cat. n°XLVI, repr. 234 Traveling exhibition: USA and Canada The Jewish Museum, New York, May 21 - September 19, 2004, reproduced p. 180, n°128 Art Gallery of Ontario, October 23, 2004 - January 23, 2005, reproduced p. 180, n°128 The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, February 19 - May 29, 2005, reproduced p. 180, n°128

Bibliography

Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani, Catalogo Generale, Desegni 1906 - 1920 con i disegni provenienti dalla collezione Paul Alexandre (1906-1914), Milan, 1994, n°248, repr.

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Painted in 1916, this drawing represents a clothed spanish man, wearing a hat, with his hands crossed.

It is a wonderful example of Modigliani's subte pencil work and unique style. The year marks the beginning of Modigliani's most prolific period, which will end in 1920 upon his death. A similar work now belongs to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York: Mario the Musician.

Born in 1884, in Livorno, Modigliani began to study painting in 1898, and attented the Reale Instituto di Belle Arti in Venice in 1903. His major influences were Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec, altough he quickly developped his own style, influenced by his arrival in Paris, and his bohemin way of life. He became a current exhibitor in the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants between 1907 and 1912. Experimenting with painting, and then with sculpture after meeting Constantin Brancusi in 1909, Modigliani's subject of choice remains portraiture throughout his artistic creation. Mostly living in poor conditions, Modigliani will have a few, but important, patrons. First, the collector Dr. Paul Alexandre, then his dealers Paul Guillaume and Leopold Zborowski. Only one solo show will be organized during his lifetime, at the Galerie Berth Weill in December of 1917, by Leopold Zborowski.

In 1916, he is still represented by Paul Guillaume and spending most of his time with his artistic cirle in Paris. Those include important art historical figures such as Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz and Chaim Soutine. His subject often include people from his entourage: lovers, friends, wives, children... In the case of Caballero, the sitter's identity is not identified.

Ten years after his arrival to Paris, 1916 is an important year in the artist’s production. Numerous of Modigliani’s most iconic works were painted throughout 1916. The most iconic perhaps, remains the double portrait of Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, now in the Art Institute of Chicago and an astonishing depiction of the poet Max Jacob in a top hat and polka dot cravat, which now hangs in Dusseldorf’s Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Modigliani had been living in Montparnasse for almost a decade and had been one of the main figures in the jewish immigrants settling in the neighborhood. To celebrate his marriage to Russian poet Berthe Kitrosser, Lipschitz had commissioned this portrait to help Modigliani financially. The cost of which was described by Lipschitz as: « ten francs per sitting and a little alcohol ».

The portrait of Max Jacob draws similarities with the drawing presented in this catalogue. From the composition to the subject, Caballero can draw a parallel to one of Modigliani’s most masterful portrait.

Caballero, a work that the gallery has known of for over thirty years, has been included in several of Modigliani's most important exhibitions over the past two decades, most notably at the Palazzo Reale in Milano (2003), the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris (2003), the Jewish Museum in New York (2004) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2005). It first belonged to Youki Desnos, a central figure in the Montparnasse of Modigliani. Lucie Badoud, of her original name was the lover of Foujita for several years before marying the surrealist poet Robest Desnos.

Portrait of Max Jacob, 1916, oil on canvas, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein, Westfalen, Dusseldorf

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Mario the Musician, 1920, pencil on paper, 48.9 x 30.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pablo Picasso 1881 - 1973

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PABLO PICASSO (1881 - 1973)

Combat de Faune et de Centaure, 1946 China ink on paper 50.5 x 66 cm / 19.9 x 25.26 in.

Signed on the lower and dated on the upper left: “Golfe Juan 23 août 1946”

Provenance

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Private collection, Switzerland

Bibliography

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso œuvres de 1944 à 1946, vol XIV, Paris, 1986, n°214 (ill. p. 97)

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In July of 1946, Picasso and his companion of the time, Françoise Gillot, leave Paris to spend the summer in the South of France, in Menerbes, where the artist had bought a house for Dora Maar. Three weeks later the couple moves to the Cab d’Antibes, where the artist had already spent some time twenty years earlier. After staying a few days with the Cuttoli’s, Picasso decides to spend the month of August in Golf-Juan, staying in the house of the printer Louis Fort.

During his stay, between the 22nd and 26th of August, Picasso will create a series of Combats des Faunes et des Centaures using China Ink and drawing on sheets of Raisin paper, 50 x 65 cm.

“Every time I come to Antibes, it takes over me, again and again, like lice !... Why ? In Antibes I am taken over by this Antiquity” - Pablo Picasso.

Picasso with a linocut, Vallauris

This is a pivotal time in Pablo Picasso’s artistic career. After four years of living in occupied Paris, following the Spanish civil war, and getting politically involved, Picasso is finally starting to enjoy life in a new way.

Instead of continually painting the reality of what he see’s, mythology gives him a platform in which he can develop his imagination. Throughout the year 1946 Picasso will spend a lot of time in the South of France, which will allow him to contemplate and challenge the one artist he will always feel in competition with : Henri Matisse. This obsession with Matisse, and this newly found freedom will culminate in one of Picasso’s greatest works of the 1940’s, La Joie de Vivre, painted in 1946.

“I’ve Mastered drawing and looking for color; you’ve mastered color and are looking for drawing” Pablo Picasso to Henri Matisse “Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.”

Pablo Picasso

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La joie de vivre, 1946, oil on canvas, Musée Picasso, Antibes

This work, obviously a parody of Henri Matisse's celebrated work Bonheur de vivre (1905-06), is often read as a celebration of peace. Henri Matisse’s lyrical work features nubile girls dancing and playing pipes in an idyllic setting as long, sensual curvaceous lines flow through the composition. Picasso's version is more overtly mythological, featuring pipe-playing fauns and dancing creatures. However, he captures Matisses's lyricism in the extended swirling lines of the figures, whose forms appear to grow organically like flowers moving upwards towards the Mediterranean sun. The same lyricism can be found in the drawings that he will create throughout the summer of 1946, including in Combat de Faune et de Centaure.

The faun and the centaur are both linked to the same God, Dionysos, God of the vine, grape harvest, winemaking, wine, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. However, their imagery is very different.

In Picasso’s artistic language, fauns are associated with dance and music, and it is quite unique in the case of this series to see them engaged in an act of battle. This could potentially be the last of the remaining war-inspired imagery that Picasso has in him. On the contrary, the centaur is very much associated with war and battle. This symbolism makes this series very important, as the last drawing of the series represents the faun’s victory over the centaur. Perhaps, we could see in this series Picasso’s way of depicting the victory of the allies, a moral and human victory, over the warlike centaurs, representing the third reich.

Henri Matisse, La joie de vivre, 1905, oil on canvas, 176.5 x 240,7 cm, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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PABLO PICASSO (1881 - 1973)

Jacqueline au chapeau noir (Tête de femme), 1962 Linocut in colours 75 x 65 cm / 29.5 x 25.63 in.

Published: Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Signed lower right Numbered in pencil lower left Printed by Arnèra (Vallauris)

Provenance

Collection Jorn Utzon Utzon Family, by descent He is one of the most famous architects in the world (Sidney Opera)

Exhibitions

Picasso Mania, Galerie Nationale du Grand Palais, Paris, October 7, 2015 - February 29, 2016

Bibliography

Pablo Picasso, Catalogue of the printed graphic work, 1904-1967, Kornfeld editions, Bern, Switzerland, Georges Bloch, established for the exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Zurich, July - August 1968, reproduced p. 221, n°1028 Catalogue Raisonné de l’oeuvre gravé, Picasso Peintre Graveur, 1959-1965, Volume V, Kornfeld editions, Bern, Switzerland, Brigitte Baer, 1989, reproduced and archived p. 435-436, n°1311 Picasso Linograveur, Musée Picasso, Antibes, Mazzotta, 1990, published by Arnera, Vallauris, reproduced p. 73 Picasso.Mania, Galerie Nationale du Grand Palais, Paris, October 7, 2015 - February 29, 2016, reproduced p. 49, n°54 Another plate (artist’s proof) is kept permanently in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

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Picasso first experimented with lino cutting in 1939, but it is only after his meeting with Hidalgo Arnera in Vallauris, in 1952, that the medium will become an essential part of Picasso’s production. The knowledge and availability of Arnera inspired the artist to spend long hours experimenting with yet another technique.

Picasso had been a print maker throughout his career, starting in 1907 with his own press. However, something was always missing from the process: color. This is why linocuts became such an important part of Picasso’s final period, it gave him the missing piece to his multiples.

Between 1959 and 1962, Picasso will create eighty-eight linocuts, using a technique that he himself invented, allowing him to keep using the same matrix, while applying different colors progressively. Traditionally, a new plate of linoleum would have to be used for each color desired, but Picasso would carve the medium and apply the wanted color onto a sheet when he believed a particular stage was completed. The matrix would then be cleaned, carved again by the artist, and applied with a different color. This new process was more in line with the quickness of execution of Picasso. While many of the works created during this period are related to bullfighting and bacchanalia, the most important works to come out of these series are the portraits of women. Often inspired by his lover and wife Jacqueline Roque, as it is the case in Jacqueline au chapeau noir, these works represent, in a cubist reminiscent style, a face, simultaneously shown in profile and face on, creating a unique equilibrium. The colors used, often shades of earthy browns and beige, create a direct parallel with the ceramics created at the same period in Vallauris.

As is true for the tools used for the carving of the linoleum, also used in the carving of the ceramics.

Of the two thousand multiples that Picasso produced in his prolific career, linocuts have become some the most sought after, with only around a hundred and fifty works created with this technique. The culmination of the medium was attained in 2014, when the British Museum acquired two important sets of 1962 linocuts: Still Life under the Lamp and Jacqueline Reading. The sets included a finished linocut along with different proofs showing their step-by-step evolution. “The visual impact, rarity and exceptional quality of the Picasso linocut sets makes them a fantastic acquisition for the British Museum” explained Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, which contributed to the purchase.

The value of linocuts vary on the subject, format, edition number, rarity, provenance and overall conservation of each work. Portraits of women and still lives have recently known an increase in popularity and have become the go to works for linocut collectors. Portraits of Jacqueline, as well as Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, have seen some raising interest in the last twenty years and remain some of the masterpieces created by Picasso using lino cutting.

One of the reasons to explain this rising interest in linocut is the mastery of Picasso with this technique.

By finding a way to apply color with the same linoleum sheet, Picasso eliminated all imbalances that would appear in using different matrix. It also allowed for more colors to be applied as can be seen in Jacqueline au chapeau noir, where Picasso applies a variety of earth inspired colors, and in Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, where the artist decided to apply the primary colors and contrast them with black and white. The technique also allow for the colors to stay in their original shade if the work is properly conserved.

As was demonstrated in the Grand Palais’ exhibition Picasso Mania, the artist’ print making techniques inspired many of the pop and contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Pettibone, Claes Oldenburg and Errò. In the 1980’s Andy Warhol created a series of work after Picasso’s heads, closely echoing linocuts portraying Jacqueline Roque.

Thanks to Picasso and Warhol, the 1960’s saw modern and contemporary prints become an essential part of the art landscape. Warhol, choosing a more traditional approach to print making by creating screen prints, continued in the footsteps of his European counter part, by immortalizing the women he represented. Taken from pop culture, and not his personal love life, Warhol created prints of Marylin Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor…

Both artists have arguably become the most important print makers of the past century and have given to the medium new life, by using color and pushing the boundaries of a technique used by so many masters before them: Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya…

The art market has followed the trend and given the medium the reconnaissance it deserves, lead by Picasso and Warhol continuing to achieve auction records around the world in print dedicated sales.

Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, 1958, linocut

Andy Warhol, Head (after Picasso) n°V, 1985, acrylic on printed canvas

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Niki de Saint Phalle 1930 - 2002

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (1930 - 2002) L'Oiseau Amoureux, 2000

Painted resin and ceramic vase 60 x 48 x 20 cm / 23.6 x 18.9 x 7.9 in.

Signed and numbered on reverse “12/150” Stamped “Haligon” on the reverse (sculpture, art casting)

Provenance

Galerie Guy Pieters, Belgium Private collection, France

Exhibitions

Hannover, Sprengel Museum, La Fête, Die Schenkung Niki de Saint Phalle, Werke aus den Jahren 1952-2001, November - February 2001 (another example exhibited) Bern, Galerie Kornfeld, Niki de Saint Phalle: Skulpturen Objekte Lithographien Serigraphien, September - December 2001 (another example exhibited) Amsterdam, Gallery Delaive, Niki de Saint Phalle: Recent Sculptures, November - December 2001 (another example exhibited) Ulm, Fischerplatz Galerie, Leckerbissen II, January - February 2006 (another example exhibited) Rheinstetten, Internationale Messe für Klassische Moderne und Gegenwartskunst. art Karlsruhe, March 2006 (another example exhibited) Fécamp, Palais Bénédictine, Niki de Saint Phalle: Vive l'amour !

June - September 2006 (another example exhibited) London, Coskun Fine Art, Niki de Saint Phalle, Yves Klein, May - June 2007 (another example exhibited).

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Guy Pieters Gallery, Jean-Michel Folon, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Sam Francis, October - November 2008 (another example exhibited) Saint-Paul de Vence, Galerie Guy Pieters, Niki de Saint Phalle, July - September 2009 (another example exhibited) Bologna, Galleria Arte e Arte. Jean Tinguely & Niki de Saint Phalle, October 2009 - February 2010 (another example exhibited) Beirut, Metropolitan Club Achrafieh, July 2010 (another example exhibited) Paris, Grand Palais, Rétrospective Niki de Saint Phalle, Septembre 17, 2014 - February 2, 2015

Bibliography

Ulrich Krempel, La Fête - Die Schenkung Niki de Saint Phalle, Hannover, 2001, p. 367, illustrated in color Laure Verchere, L'arte di abitare con la primavera in casa, Elle Decor, Milan, 1998, p. 71, illustrated in color Victoria Ville-Paris,Niki de Saint Phalle: Vive l'amour!

Fécamp: Palais Bénédictine, 2006, p. 3, illustrated in color Dane McDowell, L'esthétique du Loft, Résidences Décoration, Nice, September 2008, n.p, illustrated in color Jean Tinguely & Niki de Saint Phalle, Galleria Arte e Arte, Bologna, 2009 In 1955, Niki de Saint-Phalle discovers the art of Gaudi after a trip to Spain, and will be influenced by the fantastic shapes and colorful palette of the Catalan artist

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In 1955, Niki de Saint Phalle discovers the art of Gaudi after a trip to Spain, and will be influenced by the fantastic shapes and colorful palette of the Catalan artist.

Her first sculpture was born from her meeting with her future husband, Jean Tinguely, to whom she asked to weld a metal frame that she plastered. In 1964, she worked in Switzerland to make large papier mâché heads and created, in April 1965, her first Nanas made with this medium. She began using polyester for the manufacture of her works in 1967, and from 1972 worked on her monumental sculptures and editions with the art resin maker Robert Haligon. Nana is the nickname of her housekeeper, a woman who is strongly behind Niki's education during her years in Connecticut.

In 1980, her first sculptures-objects are created, family from which is derived L’Oiseau Amoureux, which is being gripped by a Nana.

The bird is part of another of the most important subjects of representation in the eyes of Niki: the bestiary.

During the early 1990s, she worked on a project that had fascinated her for more than a decade, Noah's Arch. This project, planned for a Jerusalem park, represents the arrival of the arch. To create the animals she looks into the first representations that humans had of them. She looks at how they were drawn before the invention of photography. The result represents hybrid and fantastic animals, evoking the totems she created by looking at those of ancient civilizations. The bird, as often, can be a symbol of the man, very often absent in the work of the artist. She will say, “Where are the men in my work? When men are in love, they are animals. When they are mean, they become monsters. The bird. When I draw his wings, I breathe.” This work, represented with open wings, symbolizes a Niki of Saint Phalle free, happy, fulfilled.

The bird sometimes carries a child, probable memory of her father, who can also become a monster, like his act of rape at the expense of his daughter.

The bird is also present in Niki de Saint Phalle’s last project: The Magic Circle of Queen Califa, in California.

Created during the preparation of the Californian park, L'Oiseau Amoureux recalls one of the important sculptures of this project, which shows a blue mythological bird with open wings and a golden head.

The eagle, probably represented here, is an important symbol of ancient Native Indian and Mexican civilizations. This explains his dominant presence in The Magic Circle of Queen Califa.

This is obviously not the first time that the bird appears so importantly in the artistic language of Niki de Saint Phalle. The bird with open wings is already present in the Stravinsky Fountain, a work created with her partner, Jean Tinguely, for the square dedicated to Igor Stravinsky, in Paris, in 1983. The sculpture refers to The Firebird, ballet of the Russian composer written in 1910. In this representation, the bird is not blue, but multicolored. However, he has claws similar to those of L'Oiseau Amoureux, and a face resembling one of an eagle, thus creating an obvious parallelism between the two works.

Antonio da Correggio, Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle, c. 1531-1532, oil on canvas

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Mythological Bird, Queen Califa’s Magic Circle, 2003, California

We can also see in L’Oiseau Amoureux a mythological reference: Zeus metamorphosed into an eagle to kidnap the young and beautiful Ganymede. Niki is passionated by mythology, which can force the rapprochement.

Ganymede, the most beautiful mortal in a passage of the Iliad, is the son of Tros, founder of Troy and the Nymph Callirhoé. While guarding his father's flock, Zeus, seduced by his beauty, metamorphosed into an eagle and took him away to take him to Olympus. Ganymede became the cupbearer of the gods instead of Hebe, daughter of Hera, to serve them the nectar and ambrosia that makes them immortal.

To appease Tros' anger, Zeus gave him immortal mares, a scepter made of vines, and a gold cup. But Hera, wife of Zeus, jealous, demanded that he separates from his lover and sends him back to earth.

Zeus preferred to make the constellation Aquarius instead, which he placed next to that of the Eagle.

The Firebird, Stravinsky Fountain, 1983, Paris

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Galerie Jean-François Cazeau After working for over twenty years, with his uncle Philippe, one of the greatest Impressionist and Modern Art dealers of his generation, Jean-François Cazeau opened his gallery in September 2009 in the heart of the Marais district of Paris, rue Sainte Anastase, a few steps away from the Picasso Museum. Jean-François Cazeau uses his knowledgeable expertise and advice on Impressionist and Modern Art in keeping with a family tradition, whilst also paying close attention to the transformations of his era and being involved in the Contemporary Art Market. This dual ambition has made the gallery a major actor of the French and international art scenes.

The gallery permanently shows works by Impressionist and Modern Masters such as Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Joan Mirò, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Sisley. It complements this strong selection with key artists of the post-war era including Gaston Chaissac, Robert Combas, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hartung, Yves Klein, and Niki de Saint Phalle.

8 rue Sainte Anastase, 75003 Paris, France • +33 (0)1 48 04 06 92

jfc@galeriejfcazeau.com • www.galeriejfcazeau.com

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For additional inquiries please contact: Jean-François Cazeau Owner

+33 (0)6 03 79 76 26

Raphael David Tecucianu Director +33 (0)7 68 66 57 68

Yves Choukroun Associate Partner

+33 (0)6 63 09 56 78

Credits Texts Galerie Jean-François Cazeau Reproduction of works ©Thomas Hennocque pages: 11, 12 , 17, 20, 27, 31, 35, 38, 41, 42, 47, 55 ©Jérôme Broutin page: 51 Remaining pictures © Rights reserved Graphic design and printing brunocigoi@mac.com Printed April 2018 on Fedrigoni paper, Symbol Mat Plus ©2018 Galerie Jean-François Cazeau All rights reserved

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Morceaux choisis Selected works

Morceaux choisis Selected works

GALERIE JEAN - FRANÇOIS CAZEAU

PARIS-FRANC E