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Lot Essay
Françoise Guiter will include this work in the upcoming Germaine Richier Catalogue Raisonné in preparation and we are grateful for her assistance.
In the years after the Second World War, Germaine Richier abandoned her realist style that she had learned from Rodin's assistant, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle to create striking sculptures that fuse the formal language of expressionism with the dark whimsy of Surrealism. Much like Giacometti, Richier channeled post-war trauma into dense battered sculptural forms, teetering on the brink of disintegration. Conceived in 1949, L'ogre is typical of the sculptures the artist produced at the time.
Richier employed Nardone, a favorite model of Rodin's, to pose for L'ogre. Nardone's portly, aged body was the perfect inspiration for an artist seeking to portray the broken figures of humanity left in the wake of war. To accentuate the physicality of the elderly muse's gnarled body, the artist used her bare hands to knead and shape the clay that would serve as the cast for the finished piece. The surface of the bronze still bears the intricate marks of the artist's hand.
The work itself is strikingly contradictory in its portrayal of the human condition. While the ogre's limbs are frail, his core is remarkably solid, resulting in a consciously unsettling juxtaposition. Though embattled, the ogre retains a sense of stability, firmly rooted in the ground and standing upright. The fortitude of the scarred figure asserts the persistence of the human will to survive history's darkest hour.
Germaine Richier in her studio with the model Nardone, Paris, 1954. (c) ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011.
In the years after the Second World War, Germaine Richier abandoned her realist style that she had learned from Rodin's assistant, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle to create striking sculptures that fuse the formal language of expressionism with the dark whimsy of Surrealism. Much like Giacometti, Richier channeled post-war trauma into dense battered sculptural forms, teetering on the brink of disintegration. Conceived in 1949, L'ogre is typical of the sculptures the artist produced at the time.
Richier employed Nardone, a favorite model of Rodin's, to pose for L'ogre. Nardone's portly, aged body was the perfect inspiration for an artist seeking to portray the broken figures of humanity left in the wake of war. To accentuate the physicality of the elderly muse's gnarled body, the artist used her bare hands to knead and shape the clay that would serve as the cast for the finished piece. The surface of the bronze still bears the intricate marks of the artist's hand.
The work itself is strikingly contradictory in its portrayal of the human condition. While the ogre's limbs are frail, his core is remarkably solid, resulting in a consciously unsettling juxtaposition. Though embattled, the ogre retains a sense of stability, firmly rooted in the ground and standing upright. The fortitude of the scarred figure asserts the persistence of the human will to survive history's darkest hour.
Germaine Richier in her studio with the model Nardone, Paris, 1954. (c) ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011.