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Maurice Barraud (1889-1954) is a Swiss painter, illustrator and engraver, among the important Genevan artists of the 20th century. Initially an advertising designer, he then trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva (where he notably took modeling courses from sculptor James Vibert). Then he devoted himself fully to painting from 1913. The following year, following his first exhibition at the Galerie Max Moos in Geneva, a reference gallery for modern art in Switzerland. With his brother François Barraud, Hans Berger, Emile Bressler and Gustave Buchet, he founded the “Falot” group (one of the very first manifestos of modern painting in French-speaking Switzerland). From 1917 to 1919, he participated in the illustration and layout of the art and literature magazine L'Éventail. He exhibited in 1923 at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, then visited Spain, Algeria and Italy. From 1929, he obtained numerous mural commissions, public or private, notably for the Lucerne and Bienne train stations, for the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the museum of federal maps in Schwyz and the University of Fribourg. He illustrated several works, notably Francis Cargo and Jean Giraudoux.
The recognition of Maurice Barraud as a painter was considerable in Switzerland, from the 1920s. His painting is very inspired by the French painting of his time, with the particular ascendancy of Matisse and Bonnard. Woman represents his favorite subject, and his culture draws him towards sunny atmospheres and Mediterranean myths (opulent bodies, Greek profiles, concise lines, light and soft hues, seductive themes. He also drew and engraved a lot. Little is known about the share of sculpted works by this artist, although The Geneva Museum of Art and History notably preserves several plasters, and at least one bronze. This museum preserves numerous works by this prolific artist (paintings, graphic arts, as well as a legacy. numerous Japanese prints), and also placed a monumental order on him in 1950, with three large wall decorations for a landing of the museum, on the theme of the Muses of Parnassus from Greek mythology.
This bronze that I am presenting to you today for sale - much earlier since it can be dated to the 1920s - is a work all the more rare and interesting as it reflects a certain influence of the return to classicism and mythology which inspired a whole part of French sculpture during the Art-Deco period. Several unpublished Barraud plasters, from the artist's bequest to the MAH in 1955, attesting to his occasional foray into the field of sculpture. It is also notable that the artist collected certain Italian female figures in terracotta from the Hellenistic period (a figurine of Aphrodite kept at the MAH under inventory number 020612), including the canons of beauty (small, very round breasts , undulating silhouette) are close to this large bronze “Pasiphaé” with a slender body, whose extremities are expressively languid, stretched. This stylization of the body is reminiscent of certain sculptures from the early years of the French sculptor Hubert Yencesse. “She who shines for all” (this is the Greek meaning of the name Pasiphaé) was the daughter of Helios and Perse, who married the King of Crete Minos, giving birth to several children, including the fatal Phaedra. But she is especially famous for having fallen madly in love with a white bull sent by Poseidon to take revenge on Minos. An adulterous and zoophilic coupling which would give birth to the famous Minotaur, with the head of a bull and the body of a man. This is why Pasiphaé is represented here lying down, sulking, holding bovine horns, as if they were a lyre, not yet aware of the inevitability of this relationship with the animal. The patina of this bronze with a very pleasant stylization is particularly careful, resulting from a lost wax casting (therefore in a very small number of copies possible) produced in the best Swiss foundry of this period, the Fonderie Pastori in Carouge, in the canton of Geneva. As the art critic François Fosca well described, in his obituary article published in La Tribune de Genève on November 15, 1954, the world that Barraud created was a world of “calm voluptuousness” and “happy minutes”; This Mediterranean-style bronze, now found, constitutes a happy and rare sculpted testimony.
