Alfred Auguste JANNIOT (1889-1969) - Lot 80

Alfred Auguste JANNIOT (1889-1969) Torso of Cécile Model created between 1927 and 1929, our example cast after 1930 Bronze with light-brown patina Signed "A. JANNIOT" and bears the founder's mark "Alexis Rudier". Height: 77 cm Small patina chip on the right shoulder blade, some wear and scattered chips on the base. Provenance : Paul Gellos Collection; by descent, Toulouse Created between 1927 and 1929, this female torso, known as Cécile, after Janniot's wife, occupies a singular place in the artist's work. Janniot worked on this torso after completing his Hommage à Jean Goujon in Rome. At Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann's request, the group took its place in front of "the hotel of a very rich collector", one of the most visited pavilions at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs. The subject of this tribute, the Three Graces, and the artist to whom it is paid, already perfectly illustrate the guidelines of Janniot's work: an attentive look at Antiquity, its themes and canons, in the light of Renaissance sculptors, to which is added a new precious and decorative dimension inaugurating a new artistic era, that of Art Deco. This tribute, so revealing of the revival of sculpture between the wars, through a reappropriation of figurative classicism, gave the sculptor a powerful reputation to which, however, the epithet decorative remained attached. The year 1925 thus laid the foundations for Janniot's sculpture; 1931, with the decor for the Palais des Colonies, put an end to the reductive view of his sculpture, sometimes limited to a decorative appreciation, and established Janniot as a monumental sculptor. Cécile's torso took on its full meaning as an artistic research and sculptural achievement. Janniot explored the female body in a new, truthful way, detaching himself from decorative necessity to extract the essential. He studies the female body with a new rigor: face, hair, legs and arms disappear, as if to evict anything that might be considered ornamental. Louis Vauxcelles, at the 1929 Salon des Tuileries (Excelsior, May 10, 1929, p.5), took note of this new direction: "Janniot's torso is of real beauty; this artist, who had been at an impasse for some time, has finally understood that style can only be acquired through fervent observation of nature; he has returned to the truth". This bronze bears the mark of foundryman Alexis Rudier. The foundry was taken over by his son, Eugène Rudier, in 1897. Only a handful of early proofs exist, contemporary with the artist.