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The passionate and powerful figurative sculpture of the late Georges Jeanclos evokes emotion through a mastery of materials. Anguished and full of pathos, the works have an immediate and provocative poignancy. Their faces and postures show an extraordinary sense of tragic human experience; yet retain a tender beauty by the deft use of the sculptor’s chosen medium, a thin gray terra cotta.
Georges Jeanclos once said that the largest influences on his work were World War II, his apprenticeship to a sculptor, and his discovery of Etruscan art. There were tragedies in the artist’s biography that also had effect on the work. Central among those was his experience of hiding with his Jewish family during the Nazi occupation. During 1943, when he was 10 years old, his family fled the village where they had been hiding and lived in the forest near Vichy for a year to escape the Gestapo. As curator Anne McPherson writes, “Memories of this unquiet childhood, coupled with anguish aroused by the suffering and death of so many, penetrate the person and work of George Jeanclos. (The) earliest exhibited work was undertaken both as a memorial and as an attempt at personal re-centering. The Kaddish series, the Urnes, and the Dormeurs recall an individual and collective past, at the same time as they reach towards a future synthesis as yet unknown.” (McPherson, Anne, The Sculpture of Georges Jeanclos, The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, 1995, p. 5)
Urne, 1977 is an example from a series of works made when his father died. The sorrowful experience of human loss is also evident in Urne avec Figure, 1983 (illustrated). A crouching, twisted body huddles within the gentle folds of the clay. Jeanclos was often quoted regarding the use of the medium; for him the undecorated gray terra cotta was ideal for expressing the fragility of life. The thin clay shrouds the body and often carries fragments of words from the Psalms, the Song of Songs, or the Kaddish.
Born in Paris in 1933, Georges Jeanclos apprenticed to a sculptor at the age of thirteen. Following his studies at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts, Jeanclos won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1959. He continued his study with Balthus at the Villa Medicis in Rome from 1959 through 1964. In a professional career over thirty years long, Jeanclos produced a body of work in ceramics and in bronze, gaining considerable recognition in France. There are several major public sculptures in Paris, Lille, and Provins. His work has been shown in Italy, Germany, Israel, New York and Montreal. |
Education
1952 - 1959 École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
1959 - 1964 Villa Medici, studied with Balthus
Museum Collections
Centre Culturel de l’Yonne, Auxterre
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain
Foudation du Judaïsme français, Paris
F.R.A.C. Alsace-Lorraine
F.R.A.C. Champagne-Ardennes
F.R.A.C. Normandie
Institut du Monde Arabe
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Jewish Museum, New York
Johnson Foundation, USA
Musée Cantini, Marseille
Musée d’Art Juif, Paris
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée de Cambrai
Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans
Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels
Poitou-Charentes
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2002 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
2001 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
1999 Musée de l’Hospice Cometess, Lille
Rétrospective Georges Jeanclos
Musée Daubigny, Auvers-sur-Oise
Galerie Capazza, Nançay
1996 Musée Labenche, Brive-la-Gaillarde
Terres Cuites
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris La fontaine Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
LARC, Scène Nationale, Le Cruesot
1995 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Galerie Capazza, Nancay
1993 Centre Culturel de Boulogne-Billancourt
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans
1990 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris Le Tympan de Saint-Ayoul
Galerie Patrice Trigano, FIAC, Paris
1989 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Saintes
Le Prieuré d’Airaines (Somme)
1988 Herzliya Museum of Art, Israël
1988 Musée de Cambrai
Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
Musée d’Arad, Israël
1987 Galerie Woljen/Udell, Edmonton
Galerie Woltjen/Udell, Vancouver
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1986 Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
Maison de la culture, La Rochelle, Le tympan de Saint-Ayoul
1985 Centre culturel de l’Yonne
Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1984 Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
Maison de la culture, Orléans
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1983 Musée National d’Art Moderne, Troyes
Galerie Seoul, Korea
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
Maison de la Culture, Orléans
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1982 Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium
1981 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1980 Galerie Albert Loeb, F.I.A.C., Paris
Galerie Jade, Colmar
Forum Gallery, New York
1979 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
Biennale Prize, Budapest
1978 C.A.C., Pontoise
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1977 Galerie La Touriale, Marseille
Galerie Noella Gest, FIAC, Paris
Galerie Lacloche, Paris
Ateliers d’aujourd’hui, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
Botrop Museum, Botrop, Germany
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
1975 Galerie Shandar, Paris
1974 Galerie Shandar, Paris
1973 Maison de la Culture, Vichy
1967 Galerie 9, Paris
1966 Oslo
1966 Cologne
1964 - 1965 Galerie 9, Paris
1960 - 1961 Galerie Jardin des Arts, Rome
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