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  Georges
Jeanclos
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, France
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, France
Foudation du Judaïsme français, Paris, France
F.R.A.C. Alsace-Lorraine, France
F.R.A.C. Champagne-Ardennes, France
F.R.A.C. Normandie, France
Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish Museum, New York
Johnson Foundation, USA
Musée Cantini, Marseille, France
Musée d’Art Juif, Paris, France
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
Musée de Cambrai, Cambrai, France
Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon, France
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France
Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium
Poitou-Charentes
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada


Selected Solo Exhibitions

2014           Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2011           Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France
2010           Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2009           Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2006           Scultures, Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, France
2004           Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2002           Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
                  Musée d’Art et d’ Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, France
2001           Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1999           Musée de l’Hospice Cometess, Lille, France
                  Rétrospective Georges Jeanclos, Musée Daubigny,
                           Auvers-sur-Oise, France
                  Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France
1996           Musée Labenche, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
                  Terres Cuites
                  Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris La fontaine Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
                  LARC, Scène Nationale, Le Cruesot, France
1995           Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
                  Galerie Capazza, Nancay, France
1993           Centre Culturel de Boulogne-Billancourt, France
                  Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France
1990           Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris Le Tympan de Saint-Ayoul
                  Galerie Patrice Trigano, FIAC, Paris, France
1989           Musée des Beaux-Arts, Saintes, France
                  Le Prieuré d’Airaines (Somme)
1988           Herzliya Museum of Art, Israël
1988           Musée de Cambrai, France
                  Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
                  Musée d’Arad, Israël
1987           Galerie Woljen/Udell, Edmonton, Canada
                  Galerie Woltjen/Udell, Vancouver, Canada
                  Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
                  Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1986           Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto, Canada
                  Maison de la culture, La Rochelle, Le tympan de Saint-Ayoul
1985           Centre culturel de l’Yonne, France
                  Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1984           Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
                  Maison de la culture, Orléans, France                  
                  Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
1983           Musée National d’Art Moderne, Troyes, France
                  Galerie Seoul, Korea
                  Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
                  Maison de la Culture, Orléans, France
                  Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France  
1982           Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium
1981           Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
                  Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C.
                  Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
1980           Galerie Albert Loeb, F.I.A.C., Paris, France
                  Galerie Jade, Colmar, France                      
                  Forum Gallery, New York
1979           Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
                  Biennale Prize, Budapest, Hungary
1978           C.A.C., Pontoise, France
                  Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
1977           Galerie La Touriale, Marseille, France
                  Galerie Noella Gest, FIAC, Paris, France
                  Galerie Lacloche, Paris, France
                  Ateliers d’aujourd’hui,  Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France          
                  Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
                  Botrop Museum, Botrop, Germany
                  Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
1975           Galerie Shandar, Paris, France
1974           Galerie Shandar, Paris, France
1973           Maison de la Culture, Vichy, France
1967           Galerie 9, Paris, France
1966           Oslo, Norway
1966           Cologne, Germany
1964 - 65    Galerie 9, Paris, France
1960 - 61    Galerie Jardin des Arts, Rome, Italy