Lot Essay
Fautrier's Otages ("the hostages") series is generally considered his greatest achievement and one of the most poignant memorials by an artist to the victims of the German Occupation. Whereas the paintings from this series use a layering of plaster to replicate the texture of mutilated flesh, it was only in this very rare sculpture that Fautrier took such "sculptural" experiments to their logical conclusion.
Andre Malraux referred to Fautrier's Otages series as "hieroglyphics of the suffering" and called it "the most beautiful monument to the dead of the Second World War."
Les Otages were conceived by Fautrier during the Nazi occupation of France between 1942 and 1945 at a time when he was personally under the constant threat of exposure as both a member of the resistance and a radical anti-Nazi artist. For this reason he only dared to sign many of these works at the end of the war.
Predominantly a series that depicts decapitated heads and mutilated body parts, the overriding characteristic of Les Otages is that these images are shown dissolving into the anonymity of the material of which they are made. They are portraits of a ravaged humanity that has turned to dust.
In sculptural form Fautrier's vision is especially powerful. In this lead piece an encrusted head both infuses the anonymous form with life, while at the same time, commemorating the countless forgotten and nameless victims of the war by crystallizing in space the passing of such humanity into the unknown. Although Fautrier had been making sculptures since 1928, this was the first and only time that he had distorted the human form to the verges of abstraction, where raw texture alone conveys the emotional charge of this painful subject.
Andre Malraux referred to Fautrier's Otages series as "hieroglyphics of the suffering" and called it "the most beautiful monument to the dead of the Second World War."
Les Otages were conceived by Fautrier during the Nazi occupation of France between 1942 and 1945 at a time when he was personally under the constant threat of exposure as both a member of the resistance and a radical anti-Nazi artist. For this reason he only dared to sign many of these works at the end of the war.
Predominantly a series that depicts decapitated heads and mutilated body parts, the overriding characteristic of Les Otages is that these images are shown dissolving into the anonymity of the material of which they are made. They are portraits of a ravaged humanity that has turned to dust.
In sculptural form Fautrier's vision is especially powerful. In this lead piece an encrusted head both infuses the anonymous form with life, while at the same time, commemorating the countless forgotten and nameless victims of the war by crystallizing in space the passing of such humanity into the unknown. Although Fautrier had been making sculptures since 1928, this was the first and only time that he had distorted the human form to the verges of abstraction, where raw texture alone conveys the emotional charge of this painful subject.