André Jaoul 1928-2000. Seated Bronze Nude

André Jaoul 1928-2000. Very pretty seated nude in bronze with green patina. Artist's proof Numbered EA III/IV bears the monogram of André Jaoul Artist from Nimes He was above all a lover of stone from which emerges, through a vigilant action of gestures and the heart, the thought form. The sculptor André Jaoul was born in Nîmes in 1928. He was very early attracted by the art of ancient civilizations; the Gallo-Roman buildings and remains that he discovered in his native city amazed him. Man's great mastery of stone fascinated him and this aspect of creation quickly became a must for him. From the age of eleven, he attended evening classes at the Beaux Arts in Nîmes and completed his training at the Beaux Arts in Paris in the workshops of Niclausse (live model), Saupique (stone practice), and Janniot (monumental art) where he learned rigor, balance and a sense of composition. He met Cardot, César, Hiquily and many others during his studies. Over the years, he worked in several professions in Paris (window dresser, theater set builder, architectural model maker). He returned permanently to Nîmes in 1952. Unable to make a living from his sculpture, he continued his work as an architectural model maker and became a restorer for historic monuments. He was a drawing professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes in the early 1960s. André Jaoul obtained a position as a sculpture professor at the Beaux Arts in Lyon in 1967; he remained there for thirty years, until 1996. The artist moved to Lirac in 1978. His artistic career was punctuated by group exhibitions and a few solo exhibitions. Likewise, he will access several public commissions, notably for the city of Nîmes. Among his favorite artists, André Jaoul liked to cite the sculptors Cellini, Pradier, Bourdelle, Despiau, Gimond, Zadkine, Letourneur, La Chaise or Germaine Richier, and the painters Rembrant, Poussin, Delacroix, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Marquet, Modigliani, Bonnard, Rouault, Soutine, Fernand Léger, Balthus or Freud. His constant, inexhaustible source of inspiration is the female nude: sovereign, the Woman in her mystery questions him. His research is born from an emotion that he transposes through the line, the modeled or carved volume. Drawing, which he practiced regularly, was a major exercise that nourished his knowledge of the human body and fertilized his creative energy. Complementary, but not predominant, modeling was for him only an essential step in the completion of his work. "He doesn't have the natural strength of carved material," André Jaoul left us in Nîmes in 2000.