Arman (1928-2005) Bronze Panthers

Large gilt bronze sculpture signed by the artist ARMAN (1928-2005) New Realism style composition depicting several bronze panthers cut and assembled, beautiful mirror-polished golden patina. They rest on a black lacquered metal base. Good condition, dimensions 50.5 cm long X 30 cm high X 15 cm deep. This work is signed-engraved ARMAN and numbered (sold with its certificate of authenticity). Rare modèle d'un tirage sur trente numéroté: XXIV /XXX et Répertorié dans les Archives de la Fondation Arman sous la référence N°6032 et dans les Archives de Mme Denyse Durand-Ruel sous la référence N°10470. Cette oeuvre est vendue avec son certificat d'authenticité qui sera remis au futur acquereur.

ARMAN was born in Nice on November 17, 1928 to Antoine Fernandez, a Frenchman of Spanish origin, and Marthe Jacquet. Arman was recognized by his father at the age of five. He obtained his baccalaureate and decided, in 1946, to enroll in the School of Decorative Arts in Nice, which he left in 1949. His father enrolled him in the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Between 1949 and the end of 1950, he obtained two Art History certificates, specializing in the study of China during the Haute Epoque. Having met Yves Klein during judo lessons at the police school in Nice in 1947, Arman joined the latter in Madrid in 1950. With the poet Claude Pascal, they forged a friendship around Zen Buddhism, astrology, martial arts and art. He did his military service as a nurse during the Indochina War, and married Eliane Radigue, with whom he had three children. The art scene of the 1950s in France was dominated by abstraction, and Arman's early works were part of this movement at the time. At the same time, he worked in his father's furniture store, rue Paul Déroulède in Nice. Discovering the works of Kurt Schwitters and Jackson Pollock in 1954, Arman made his first stamps, rubber stamp prints. He made his first personal presentation at the Haut Pavé gallery in Paris in 1956. Then came the looks of objects that he exhibited at Iris Clert in 1958, traces of objects inked and projected onto a surface of paper. By realizing one of these gaits, he breaks the object and thus creates the angers of objects. Following a typographical error, Arman decides to eliminate the "d" from his first name. He will put an end to the work of imprinting by sealing the rubber stamps in a box, which marks the beginning of his accumulations (1959), which will later be accumulations of scraps called garbage cans. In 1960, responding to Yves Klein's Emptiness, he filled Iris Clert's gallery to exhibit Le Plein. “I affirm that the expression of detritus, of objects, has its value in itself, directly, without the will of an aesthetic arrangement obliterating them and making them similar to the colors of a palette; moreover, I introduce the meaning of the global gesture without remission or remorse” (Zero, volume 3, Dynamo, 1961). The principle of accumulation is applied to the most diverse objects: from tubes of tablets to gas masks, from dollar bills to crucifixes. The signing of the New Realism Manifesto on October 27, 1960 at Yves Klein formalizes Arman's participation in this movement initiated by the critic Pierre Restany. In the years that followed, Arman systematized the anger, and proceeded to cut objects (1961) and combustions (1964). These gestures of destruction and accumulation will find their extension in the exploration of various materials such as concrete, synthetic resin and bronze. Since 1963, Arman has lived between New York and Vence, and since 1972 has dual nationality, French and American. Thus in New York, in 1964, he organized a big happening with the complicity of many artists: the Locker Lottery of the Artist's Key Club, a sale of locker keys from the central station, in which are placed insignificant objects or small works. In the same register, twenty-one years later, Arman will raise in the courtyards of the Gare St Lazare, in Paris, two columns, l'Heure de Tous, accumulation of clocks, and Consigne à vie, accumulation of suitcases brought by travellers. The closing festival of Nouveau Réalisme took place in Milan at the end of November 1970. Arman distributed bags of garbage labeled "Arman's garbage" there. The same year, a performance entitled Slicing or America cut in two, for the benefit of the Defense Fund of the Black Panthers, shows his commitment against racial discrimination. In 1975 at the John Gibson gallery in New York, the performance Conscious vandalism took place during which Arman completely destroyed a bourgeois interior. The furniture will be the pretext for a new work of spectacular destruction, calcined then covered in bronze in The Day after (1984). At the end of the 90s, he modified the principle of the section according to a mathematical logic, by carrying out fragmentations, the object being divided into two, four, eight, sixteen… parts. Thus Arman has participated in numerous exhibitions, both personal and collective, and among the most recent are Arman at the National Gallery of the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1998, and Passage à l'acte at the MAMAC in Nice in 2001.