Hammered-iron Christ – In The Spirit Of The Marolles Artisans – Circa 1950–1960

A striking, powerful, and remarkably modern piece.

This standing Christ made of wrought and hammered iron, likely created in the 1950s–1960s, is fully in keeping with the aesthetic developed around the Artisans of Marolles and the figure of Jean Touret.

Having settled in the region in the late 1940s, Jean Touret brought together the artisans of the village of Marolles—a cabinetmaker, a metalworker, a basket weaver, and later a ceramicist—during the 1950s, with the aim of preserving traditional craftsmanship in the face of industrialization. Under his artistic direction, a highly personal style emerged, characterized by raw materials, visible craftsmanship, and deliberately unadorned forms.

Our Christ possesses precisely this primal force and the sincerity of the artisan’s touch. The iron is beaten, hammered, and marked by the tool. Each blow struck against the metal contributes to the design and gives the surface that very distinctive vibration.

The representation of Christ here is reduced to the essentials. A few lines, an almost abstract silhouette, a face barely hinted at, and long, outstretched arms that seem to merge with the cross. This work exudes an extraordinary graphic power.

The connection to the world of Jean Touret is particularly compelling: Christ was a major theme in his work, which he interpreted using numerous materials, notably wood, wrought iron, and repoussé metals. The metalworker Francis Dewaele (1912–1986) also worked with the Artisans de Marolles, a group gathered around Touret, in this same pursuit of a modernism rooted in raw materials and manual labor.

Straddling the boundaries of sacred art, folk art, and 1950s Brutalism, this small figure of Christ possesses a striking presence. Set upon its forged base, it becomes almost a sculpture in its own right, a work of art equally at home in a cabinet of curiosities as in a resolutely contemporary interior.

French work, circa 1950–1960.
Wrought iron, beaten and hammered.
In the spirit of the Artisans de Marolles and Jean Touret.
Height: 24 cm – Width: 16 cm.
In perfect condition.

A small sculpture of great power, radical, sincere, and deeply modernist, where the brutality of the iron meets the spirituality of the subject with great precision.