Head Of Victory Of Bogota By Henri Bouchard - Art Deco Bronze

Head of Victory by sculptor Henri Bouchard(1875 - 1960)
Creation: 1922
Height: 52 cm
Width: 23 cm
Depth: 37 cm S
Signed and numbered

Cast in 2002 with lost wax by the Coubertin foundry, this bronze with green patina was produced under the supervision of Francois Bouchard son of the artist and sold by The association of friends of Henri Bouchard.

This bronze is the n ° 7/8 of a cast, in accordance with the code of ethics of the Fondereie d'Art, limited to:
8 numbered proofs of 1 / 8 to 8/8
4 artist's proofs reserved for cultural institutions and numbered from I / IV to IV / IV.

Some copies were acquired by French museums (museums of the 1930s, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, the Musée de La Piscine in Roubaix).
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, bought the 6/8 copy from the 'Association of Friends of Henri Bouchard in 2012 (Inv. 2012-5-1).
A certificate signed by Francois Bouchard will be given to the purchaser

A Dijon sculptor established in Paris

Henri Bouchard was born in Dijon on December 13, 1875 into a family of craftsmen; his father, a carpenter, took him very young to visit the town museum; the child discovers the Tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy and the work of François Rude, artist to whom he will dedicate great admiration. Wanting to cut stone, in 1889 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and took lessons from the sculptor François Dameron. In 1894, a grant from the General Council of the Côte-d'Or allowed him to go to Paris. After the School of Decorative Arts, in 1895 he entered the School of Fine Arts in the studio of Ernest Barrias and obtained the Grand Prix de Rome in 1901, with his relief of Oedipus and Antigone driven out of Thebes; he stayed in Rome from 1902 to 1906. On his return, the sculptor moved to Paris, participated in several exhibitions and made himself known through the great Monument of the Reformation that he produced, with Paul Landowski, in Geneva. Bouchard practices all genres: the portrait, the human figure (peasants, winegrowers, workers ...), the animal figure and monumental sculpture, such as the group of Apollondu Palais de Chaillot in Paris (1937). Professor at the School of Decorative Arts in 1928, then professor-head of workshop at the School of Fine Arts from 1929 to 1945, the artist was elected to the Institute (Academy of Fine Arts) in 1933. He died at his Parisian home where his workshop was located, rue de l'Yvette, which would become his museum until 2007, when the studio was transferred to the new La Piscine museum in Roubaix where the whole was now on display. . This sculptor knew how to keep an artistic independence which made him one of the most authentic figures of figurative sculpture of the first half of the 20th century.

UneTête de Victoire, reminiscent of ancient Greece

From 1913, Henri Bouchard turned to a decorative style, more stripped down and purer, seeking stylization. In 1922, he produced a Head of Victory in plaster, which appeared at the Salon d'Automne of that same year. He used this piece, in 1925, in a large statue that he called, at the time of its creation, “Victory without destination”, which later became “Victory of Bogota”. Indeed, this figure presented without arms (about 3m high) at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1926 was ordered in bronze for the city of Bogota, Colombia. Unfortunately this sculpture disappears in the sinking of the boat which transports it. Bouchard kept only the plaster head and had it cast in bronze with different shades of patina. This oval face with almond eyes and a long cylindrical neck evokes ancient Greece, with the profile of the nose straight in the axis of the forehead. The search for geometrization is clear in the long stylized hair wearing a discreet laurel wreath, styled in a bun with symmetrical locks very pulled back, which lengthens the profile of the head.