Jean ROBERT dit IPOUSTÉGUY (1920-2006) - Sketch of David N°2

Bronze sculpture with black patina representing a bust of a male with his face slightly tilted forward, his arms folded on his chest. For this sculpture, Ipoustéguy works the pose with care, accentuating the projections and recesses to enhance the light effects on the sculptural mass. This is an early work, from his torn anatomies period. We can still see the past traumas, especially related to the war.
Signed and dated: « IPOUSTEGUY / 1959 ».
Susse Fondry, n°2/6 by commission of Claude Bernard gallery in 1965.


Number of copies:

This work has been cast at 9 exemplary: EA I/III and 6/6.


Dimensions:

Height: 15 in. Width: 10 in. Depth: 8 in.
Thickness of the base: 1½ in.


Provenance: Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris.


Exhibition:

At the exhibition "Kunst und Museumscerein Wuppertal " from 1970, Sketch of David No. 2 (our version), was exhibited under n°23 beside Split Helmet, n°22.


Remarks:

In the sixties, Ipoustéguy works very hard, drawing bodies constantly; works on poses, projections, hollows and roundness’s to master them into sculpture. He then focus his attention by reading books about Henry Moore researches, which seduce him, a lot. He elaborates a geometric plastic from structures built and superimposed structures. In 1962, Parisian Gallery Claude Bernard, who will welcome later the works of Bacon and Giacometti, contacted him. There he made his first solo exhibition. This is the starting of a long collaboration that will last twenty-two years, until 1984. The same year, he made a decisive trip to Greece, where he rediscovers Greek art of the fifth century before J-C. The naked human body becomes the great subject of his sculpture. He starts sculpting bodies, at a time when the human figure appears as an incongruity in art. For him, nudity becomes sculpture itself. The sculptor evokes the will to treat the human body "as a priority and as a whole." The anatomy, the muscle movement and any human mechanics fascinate him.


Bibliography:

- "L'oeuvre sculptée, catalogue raisonné 1938 2000", éditions de la différence 2001, p. 46-47.