Torso Of A Woman - Marcel Gimond (1894-1961)

Very nuanced brown chamotte sandstone
Raised on alight beige marble base

executed at the Manufacture de Sèvres
Total height 54.5 cm
After a model by Marcel Gimond (1894-1961), made in 1927 by Georges Serré (1889-1956) at the Manufacture de Sèvres and presented at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the same year.

Reproduced in "Mobilier et Décoration", 1927, p ° 163 and in "New sculptors, Marcel Gimond", Paul Fierens, Nrf, 1930, p.57.

Georges Serré (1889-1956) was a French ceramist. He worked at the Sèvres factory until 1914, when he was mobilized to go to war. He then went to Indochina where he taught ceramics at the art school of Bien-hoa for five years. On his return to France, he moved to Sèvres, rue Brongniart, but encountered difficulties in producing his works, until the intervention of the ceramist Emile Decoeur who obtained him help to build an oven for firing his ceramics. It was Georges Rouard and his gallery located on avenue de l'Opéra in Paris, who had noticed him at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts of 1925, which presented him during his "exhibitions of contemporary French artisans".
Georges Serré's taste for these sandstones came to him, among other things, from Khmer sculptures, including a Buddha's head that he had brought back from Saigon, which had seduced him so much in Indochina. He liked the warm tone as much as the rough consistency pushing him to create a material that would be close to it. It was, at Rouard's request, that he produced reproductions of modern sculptures, including this bust by Marcel Gimond.

Marcel Gimond (1894-1961) was a French sculptor. He studied in Lyon, then at the School of Fine Arts in Lyon where he graduated in 1917. Finally he arrived in Paris the same year and settled in Marly-Le-Roi. Student of Aristide Maillol, he also met Raoul Dufy and Auguste Renoir. Gimond worked with Maillol until 1920, and left him to settle in Paris and regain his independence. He then moved into Renoir's former studio, made available by Jean Renoir. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne in 1922. In 1940, Gimond left Paris to settle in the South zone, in Lyon, then in Aix en Provence; He spent his summers at Saint-Félicien, at the house of poet Charles Forot.
At the Liberation, in 1944, Gimond returned to Paris and his workshop rue Ordener, he left only a few months before his death. From 1946 to 1960, he directed a workshop at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Marcel Gimond was known for his busts of political and artistic personalities. He also owed two bas-reliefs located in the lobby of the newspaper "L'Humanité", in tribute to Marcel Cachin and Gabriel Péri.