Germaine Richier (1902-1959)

L'Hydre

Details

Germaine Richier (1902-1959)
L'Hydre
inscribed with the signature and numbered 'G. Richier, 7/8' (on the base); inscribed with the foundry mark 'Susse Fondeur Paris' (on the back of the base)
bronze with dark brown patina
31 1/8in. (79cm.) high including base
Conceived in 1954 in an edition of 12, and cast at a later date

Provenance

Herv Odermatt, Paris

Literature

Ex. cat., Galerie Creuzevault, Germaine Richier 1904-1959, Paris 1966 (another cast illustrated).
Ex. cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, In the Mind's Eye: Dada and Surrealism, December 1984-January 1985 (another cast illustrated p. 209).
Ex. cat., Saint-Paul, Fondation Maeght, Germaine Richier, rtrospective, April-June 1996, no. 69 (another cast illustrated in colour p. 131).
Ex. cat., Berlin, Akademie der Knste, Germaine Richier, Berlin 1997, no. 64 (another cast illustrated p. 100).

Exhibited

Turin, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Pittura moderna straniera nelle collezioni private italiane, (date unknown; lent by Riccardo and Magda Jucker).
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Pablo Picasso, September-November 1953, no. 99 (illustrated).

Lot Essay

"Richier spares the bronze neither privation nor torture nor the ultimate agony. She is not afraid of going as far as the corpse, carrion or even putrefaction. Some of her creatures, the gentle ones, submit to death as to a caress; others storm, and will only perish in a splendid battle; the ones which are wicked, which are killers, carry their own end about inside them, and their own gesture or air condemns them: one would say that they were already in a world beyond, like larvae that will be dead at the moment of their birth. Then there are those that are haggard, thundering giants, and I'll be hanged if you can see nursing fathers in them..." (Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues, preface to exh. cat., London, Hanover Gallery, Germaine Richier, 1955)

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