« L’ Ours Blanc » Fonte Anonyme Reprenant Le Modèle De Pompon

"L 'Ours blanc" Anonymous cast using the Pompon model This sculpture, shaped in the spirit of the POMPON models, has the particularity of its dimensions, with a length of 85 cm it reaches a size almost double of the castings in reduction of the size. Pompon polar bear. This is the whole point of this untraceable piece, which is indeed an interpretive cast in homage to the work of the great sculptor. This bronze is original, original by its dimensions, original by its anonymity and finally original by its price, in comparison with the hundreds of prints of posthumous fonts from the various original models which regularly appear on the market for fluctuating values depending on the vintage of their production! This large-sized black patina bronze has appeared on the market only once in the past ten years. From an unknown artist, founder and period, only its volume and its well-understood plastic make it an accomplished art copy. With his polar bear, Pompon radically transforms animal sculpture: he is no longer in anatomy, he is in the interpretation of the emotions generated by the animal. Eliminating accessories and details, he abandons all realistic rendering to focus on "the very essence of the animal". This economy of means gives the work a presence which finds its real strength in the monumental scale. Far from the anecdote, it reveals the search for timelessness, permanence: beneath the silent exterior of full forms, the universe of smooth sculpture becomes the birthplace of an aspiration to universal form. "I keep a large number of details destined to disappear," said Pompon. L'Ours blanc by François Pompon is an emblematic work of modern animal art. Its success has not been denied since its presentation at the Salon of 1922, where it allowed its author, then aged 67, to finally achieve fame after a whole life spent in the shadow of the great masters of his time. Indeed, during most of his career, François Pompon was a practitioner, with Auguste Rodin from 1890 then with Antonin Mercié, Alexandre Falguière and René de Saint-Marceaux. It was only very late that he put forward his personal projects, in particular after having decided to take only animals as subjects, from 1905. He then adopted a very particular and eminently modern bias: do not s 'attaching to realism and seeking to reach the very essence of the beast, gradually eliminating "all these frills", as he said himself, in favor of rounded shapes, which translate the timeless presence of the animal. The polish of the surface, playing with the light, reinforces the monumentality of the sculpture. In 1918, Pompon presented his first sculpture of a brown bear, head down. As a hard worker, he doesn't stop there. The Polar Bear was officially born in 1922, but the artist went through phases of doubt after the State commissioned a model in Lens stone, now in the Musée d'Orsay. From 1926, he made several modifications to his lost wax reduction bronzes, seeking to improve what he considered to be his masterpiece. François Pompon was so proud of this sculpture, which has since become his signature, that he nailed a plaster head to the door of his studio.