La Mandoline ou La Cigale

Details

Germaine Richier (1904-1959)
La Mandoline ou La Cigale
signed, numbered and with the foundry mark 'Richier 2/8 L. Thinot fondeur Paris' (on the shell)
natural yellow bronze, cleaned, on a stone base
25 x 15 x 13 in. (63.5 x 38.1 x 33 cm.)
executed in 1954-1955, the original edition size was supposed to be 12 but, for technical reasons, it has been reduced to only 3: 1/8-3/8.

Provenance

Estate of the artist.
Jan Krugier, acquired from the above.

Literature

J. Grenier, "Germaine Richier" in L'Oeil, September 1955, no. 9, p. 31 (another example illustrated).
G. Marchiori, Modern French Sculpture, London 1964, pp. 52-53.
Brassaï, "Germaine Richier" in Les Artistes de ma vie, Paris 1982, p. 196 (another example illustrated).
Galerie Creuzevault, ed., Germaine Richier, Paris 1966 (another example illustrated).
F. Morris, "Germaine Richier" in Paris Post-War: Art and Existentialism, 1945-1955, exh. cat., Tate Gallery London, 1993, pp. 161-162.
F. Guiter, "Biographie" in Germaine Richier, rétrospective, exh. cat., Paris, 1996, p. 108.
F. Guiter, "Tow and Plaster", Richier, exh. cat., Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, October 2006-February 2007, p. 88.
F. Guiter, "Biography", Richier, exh. cat., Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, October 2006-February 2007, p. 131-135.

Exhibited

Paris, Musée Rodin, Histoires Naturelles, 1959, no. 140.
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum, Germaine Richier, August-September 1988, no. 30 (another example exhibited and illustrated in color).
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Dimension, Petit: L'art suisse entre petit sculpture et objet d'Alberto Giacometti à nos jours, October-December 1989, p. 83 (another example exhibited and illustrated in color).
Saint-Etienne, Musée d'Art Moderne, L'Ecriture Griffée, December 1990-January 1991, no. 207, p. 170 (another example exhibited).
Saint-Paul, Fondation Maeght, Germaine Richier: Rétrospective, April-June 1996, pp. 142-143, no. 77 (another example exhibited and illustrated in color).
Berlin, Akademie der Künste, Germaine Richier, September-November 1997, no. 78 (another example exhibited).
New York, Jan Krugier Gallery in collaboration with Richard L. Feigen & Co., Drawing in Space, November 2007-January 2008, no. 14 (illustrated in color).

Lot Essay

Françoise Guiter will include this work in the upcoming Germaine Richier Catalogue Raisonné in preparation and we are grateful for her assistance.
Please note this work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Françoise Guiter.

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. La Mandoline ou La Cigale is emblematic of works from this period of Richier's oeuvre wherein she fused the bodily forms of humans and insects, creating figures of a hybrid nature. Richier began creating these types of hybrid forms in the 1940s and would continue to return to the theme through the end of her career.

Brassaï, The Artist in Her Studio, 1955. barcode: 29669028_FIG

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