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The passionate and powerful figurative sculpture of the late Georges Jeanclos evokes emotion through a mastery of materials. Anguished and full of pathos, the works have an immediate and provocative poignancy. Their faces and postures show an extraordinary sense of tragic human experience; yet retain a tender beauty by the deft use of the sculptor’s chosen medium, a thin gray terra cotta.
Georges Jeanclos once said that the largest influences on his work were World War II, his apprenticeship to a sculptor, and his discovery of Etruscan art. There were tragedies in the artist’s biography that also had effect on the work. Central among those was his experience of hiding with his Jewish family during the Nazi occupation. During 1943, when he was 10 years old, his family fled the village where they had been hiding and lived in the forest near Vichy for a year to escape the Gestapo. As curator Anne McPherson writes, “Memories of this unquiet childhood, coupled with anguish aroused by the suffering and death of so many, penetrate the person and work of George Jeanclos. (The) earliest exhibited work was undertaken both as a memorial and as an attempt at personal re-centering. The Kaddish series, the Urnes, and the Dormeurs recall an individual and collective past, at the same time as they reach towards a future synthesis as yet unknown.” (McPherson, Anne, The Sculpture of Georges Jeanclos, The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, 1995, p. 5)
Urne, 1977 is an example from a series of works made when his father died. The sorrowful experience of human loss is also evident in Urne avec Figure, 1983 (illustrated). A crouching, twisted body huddles within the gentle folds of the clay. Jeanclos was often quoted regarding the use of the medium; for him the undecorated gray terra cotta was ideal for expressing the fragility of life. The thin clay shrouds the body and often carries fragments of words from the Psalms, the Song of Songs, or the Kaddish.
Born in Paris in 1933, Georges Jeanclos apprenticed to a sculptor at the age of thirteen. Following his studies at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts, Jeanclos won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1959. He continued his study with Balthus at the Villa Medicis in Rome from 1959 through 1964. In a professional career over thirty years long, Jeanclos produced a body of work in ceramics and in bronze, gaining considerable recognition in France. There are several major public sculptures in Paris, Lille, and Provins. His work has been shown in Italy, Germany, Israel, New York and Montreal. |
Education
1952 - 1959 École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
1959 - 1964 Villa Medici, studied with Balthus
Museum Collections
Centre Culturel de l’Yonne, Auxterre, France
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, France
Foudation du Judaïsme français, Paris, France
F.R.A.C. Alsace-Lorraine, France
F.R.A.C. Champagne-Ardennes, France
F.R.A.C. Normandie, France
Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish Museum, New York
Johnson Foundation, USA
Musée Cantini, Marseille, France
Musée d’Art Juif, Paris, France
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
Musée de Cambrai, Cambrai, France
Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon, France
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France
Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium
Poitou-Charentes
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2014 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2011 Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France
2010 Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2009 Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2006 Scultures, Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, France
2004 Galerie Capazza, Art Elysées, Paris, France
2002 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
Musée d’Art et d’ Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, France
2001 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California
1999 Musée de l’Hospice Cometess, Lille, France
Rétrospective Georges Jeanclos, Musée Daubigny,
Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France
1996 Musée Labenche, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
Terres Cuites
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris La fontaine Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
LARC, Scène Nationale, Le Cruesot, France
1995 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
Galerie Capazza, Nancay, France
1993 Centre Culturel de Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France
1990 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris Le Tympan de Saint-Ayoul
Galerie Patrice Trigano, FIAC, Paris, France
1989 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Saintes, France
Le Prieuré d’Airaines (Somme)
1988 Herzliya Museum of Art, Israël
1988 Musée de Cambrai, France
Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
Musée d’Arad, Israël
1987 Galerie Woljen/Udell, Edmonton, Canada
Galerie Woltjen/Udell, Vancouver, Canada
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1986 Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto, Canada
Maison de la culture, La Rochelle, Le tympan de Saint-Ayoul
1985 Centre culturel de l’Yonne, France
Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1984 Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
Maison de la culture, Orléans, France
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
1983 Musée National d’Art Moderne, Troyes, France
Galerie Seoul, Korea
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
Maison de la Culture, Orléans, France
Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
1982 Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium
1981 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
1980 Galerie Albert Loeb, F.I.A.C., Paris, France
Galerie Jade, Colmar, France
Forum Gallery, New York
1979 Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris, France
Biennale Prize, Budapest, Hungary
1978 C.A.C., Pontoise, France
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
1977 Galerie La Touriale, Marseille, France
Galerie Noella Gest, FIAC, Paris, France
Galerie Lacloche, Paris, France
Ateliers d’aujourd’hui, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels, Belgium
Botrop Museum, Botrop, Germany
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
1975 Galerie Shandar, Paris, France
1974 Galerie Shandar, Paris, France
1973 Maison de la Culture, Vichy, France
1967 Galerie 9, Paris, France
1966 Oslo, Norway
1966 Cologne, Germany
1964 - 65 Galerie 9, Paris, France
1960 - 61 Galerie Jardin des Arts, Rome, Italy
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