Large Bronze Wrestlers By Jef Lambeaux

Large Bronze titled the wrestlers, signed twice with the mark of the founder Robert Debraz of Brussels engraved in the bronze. Trained at the Academy of Antwerp, Jef Lambeaux brought a breath of fresh air to Belgian sculpture from 1870. Rejecting the classicism that had long prevailed, he introduced a baroque realism in the choice and treatment of his subjects. The movement of the bodies, the description of the anatomy, the realism of the scenes shocked the public but also enchanted a more progressive fringe. Nicknamed the "Michelangelo of the stream", he shook up the codes. Thus, the theme of wrestling, like the combat of the gladiators of Antiquity, was treated by the artist in various works, from 1881 but moving away from the ancient influence: "Wherever man displays the prestige of his strength," said Lambeaux, "I will study and admire it." (...) But what, in this order of ideas, has always struck me the most are the fights in the fairground stalls. I grasp there, in the unexpectedness of the action, admirable plays of musculature. In the naked and arched torsos, in the stiffening of the limbs, I distinguish planes and lines of true beauty. "In this work, he dares to show a man completely overturned, who seems irremediably doomed to fall. Two large diagonals structure the scene, creating a dynamic. This model will be declined in different sizes and versions as is the case for many sculptures of the period. The work is reproduced in the book art Forest