Milon carrying a Bull by André Lurçat

Let's first take a look at this bronze sculpture from the 1920s, signed by André Lurçat (1894-1970), an eminent figure in French architecture of the first half of the 20th century.
It bears an inscription on its base: Milo athlete of the VI th Century B.C. born at Crotone several times winner of Olympian Pythian games ). This “Milon” (h. 33 cm) carrying a bull on his back confirms an early ancient inspiration in the artistic career of André Lurçat, before he began his brilliant career as an architect. If the built and movable work of André Lurçat is important, as well as his theoretical writings, there remain, however, very few traces on the art market of his sculptures, and particularly of this first academic period (he entered the Fine Arts of Paris in 1913). Everything suggests that this “Milo carrying a bull” is a very early work in his career, probably sculpted during this training that he found (too) academic at the Beaux-Arts, until 1917. Its classic and antique corresponds well to a certain vogue in the plastic and visual arts of this period, which will be confirmed at the beginning of the 1920s. This "youthful" work by Lurçat also recalls the style of the works of one of the greatest French sculptors of this period, Antoine Bourdelle. An important detail should be highlighted about this bronze, which is ultimately quite mysterious: it is the stamp of its founder. It is in fact a Swiss foundry, Pastori in Geneva, and not Parisian... However, we know that André Lurçat stayed in Switzerland in the Canton of Vaud, in 1928, at the time of the first International Congress of modern architecture (CIAM), of which he was a founding member, which took place at the Château de La Sarraz. This event can make it possible to date more precisely this meeting with Pastori, to whom he entrusted a modeling (in terracotta? in wax?) that he must have designed years earlier. I had another bronze sculpture by Lurçat some time ago, which I sold quite quickly. It was a “Mother and her child” treated in the same inspiration of Antiquity, which can be dated from the same period, in the 1920s: same dark patina, same wooden base, similar dimensions , also a Pastori edition font. These are currently the only two sculptures by André Lurçat known on the art market.