3 - Jean Fautrier (1898–1964)

Jean Fautrier (1898–1964) Large Tragic Head, 1942 Bronze, cast by Claude Valsuani, signed on the left side, edition 3/9 34 x 17 cm Provenance: Presumed to have been purchased at the Galerie Daniel Varenne, Geneva, in 1982, or at the Galerie Bonnier, Geneva Nancy Varenne-Brunot Collection Bibliography: Jean Fautrier: Genie und Rebell (Genius and Rebel), Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König; another example from the same series is reproduced on pp. 308 and 309. Jean Fautrier, *Matière et Lumière*, edited by Dieer Schwart / Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris / Paris Musée; another work from the same series is reproduced on p. 215. Fautrier 1898–1964, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / May 25–September 24, 1989; another work from the same series is reproduced on p. 165. Chapter titled “Grande testa tragica,” published in the exhibition catalog *Il volto del’900 – da Matisse a Bacon*, Palazzo Reale, Milan, September 25, 2013–February 9, 2014, Skira/Éditions du Centre Pompidou, edited by Jean-Michel Bouhours, 2013, p. 97 and pp. 141–142. Chapter titled “Jean Fautrier: Grande tête tragique 1942,” published in the exhibition catalog *Portraits – Collections du Centre Pompidou*, Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, March 2–June 24, 2012, Éditions de la Fondation P. Gianadda, with a foreword by Jean Clair, pp. 64 and 65. Chapter titled “Gran cabeza trágica,” published in the exhibition catalog *La Colección—Obras maestras del Centre Pompidou en Málaga*, March 28, 2015, to October 29, 2017, Published by the Centre Pompidou/TF Editores, bilingual (Spanish-English), 2015, pp. 102–103. Book chapter titled “Grand Tragic Head / 大悲劇頭,” published in the catalog for the temporary exhibition *Mirrors of the Portrait: Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection*. Third semi-permanent exhibition, Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project 2019–2024, Shanghai, China, July 21, 2023, to November 5, 2024, Éditions du Centre Pompidou/West Bund Museum, edited by Frédéric Paul, July 2023, pp. 148–149, p. 312. Additional information: Jean Fautrier practiced sculpture between 1927 and 1929 and then between 1935 and 1943. From these two periods emerged twenty-two sculptural works that remained largely unknown for far too long. Recognized and celebrated for his paintings, Jean Fautrier is also—despite his limited output—one of our foremost sculptors, as André Malraux noted in 1956. Yet Fautrier exhibited his sculptures on numerous occasions, placing them alongside his paintings in his exhibitions. In 1942, the artist was in Paris, working in his studio on Boulevard Raspail to illustrate the literary works of his friends: Jean Paulhan, René Char, Robert Ganzo, Francis Ponge, and Paul Éluard. Emotion lies at the heart of the creation of *La Grande Tête tragique*, created in 1942 in the midst of the Occupation. For Jean Fautrier, technique is merely a means of visual expression in the service of a theme. The subject of this sculpture is the wounded man, scarred by the events of World War II. *La Grande Tête tragique* demonstrates the artist’s desire to take reality—historical events—as the “initial impetus” for his work. His early sculptures from the 1920s already had a compact, massive appearance and a sense of wholeness and indomitability. The artistic treatment of form was not naturalistic and already foreshadowed a tormented vision in which the human figure and the face are mangled and disfigured. In a 1940 sculpture, Fautrier hollows out the human face by removing the eyes from his sculpted faces, leaving only a mask with empty eye sockets. Emphasizing this amputation, Fautrier gave the work the title *Les Yeux* (*The Eyes*), signaling to us the absence of these organs. The same process of removal is applied to the *Grande Tête tragique* (*Great Tragic Head*) from 1942. Using his fingers to shape the medium, the artist tears away the right side of the bust’s face and renders this void through a striated treatment of the surface. Its unity disrupted, the face is scarred by an extremely direct and brutal modeling of the material. The single eye consists of a cluster of incisions; the nose is flattened and forms the deep vertical line that brutally divides the face into two parts; the mouth is very thick and curved. It opens onto a stifled scream and words that now seem impossible. This head is deeply furrowed and, thanks to the volume afforded by the practice of sculpture, echoes that unique painterly technique known as “les Hautes Pâtes,” which Fautrier elevates in his painted series *Les Otages*. André Malraux affirmed this in October 1945 in his preface to the catalog *Les Otages. Paintings and Sculptures by Fautrier*: “Rather than paintings by Fautr