IMAGE DETAILS

Galerie de la Béraudière

Germaine Richier (Grans 1902-1959 Montpellier)
La Sauterelle, moyenne, 1945
Bronze with dark patina
H 54 x W 44 x D 65 cm
Signed, numbered and stamped on the base: G. Richier, 2/8; on the side: Cire Perdue Valsuani (lost wax cast)
Edition 2/8 out of 12 (1/8 - 8/8 + HC1-HC2-HC3 + EA)
Cast ordered during the artist's lifetime
Provenance: Galerie Creuzevault, Paris; private collection, Sweden; private collection, Sweden; Julian Barran Ltd, London; Galerie Daniel Varenne, Geneva; private collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above in 1995); sale Sotheby's Paris, 5 December 2018, lot 6; private collection, Belgium
Literature: Peggy Guggenheim collection, Germaine Richier, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 2007, p. 70; Jean-Louis Prat et Françoise Guiter, Germaine Richier, Rétrospective, Saint-Paul de Vence, Fondation Maeght, 1996, n° 15, pp. 46-47, ill. (another cast); Peter Selz, New Images of Man, New York, 1959, ill. p. 129 (another cast)
Exhibitions: 1997, Berlin, Akademie der Künste, Germaine Richier, p. 77, n° 15, p. 85, n° 20, ill. (another cast); 1996, Saint-Paul de Vence, Fondation Maeght, Germaine Richier, Rétrospective, p. 46, n° 15, ill. (another cast); 1955, London, The Hanover Gallery, Germaine Richier, np., n° 10 (another cast)

A key figure in the history of modern art, Germaine Richier remains unclassifiable. Trained by Bourdelle to sculpt from live models, her work took on an anthropomorphic character after the war, with the human body remaining at the centre of her preoccupations, but from then on taking on an allegorical and fantastic character, in the image of this Sauterelle, whose tormented material takes on a dramatic character of existentialist essence. Charged with a primitive force that, as André Pieyre de Mandiargues points out, is ‘as much rock or stump as flayed man’, La Sauterelle is undoubtedly one of the artist's masterpieces, a sculpture that has evolved towards an unprecedented baroque and expressive naturalism.