René LETOURNEUR (1898-1990) - Lot 2

René LETOURNEUR (1898-1990) Élan Model of 1927 Studio plaster 39 x 16 x 18 cm Wooden base: 3.5 x 15 x 15 cm René Letourneur discovered marble working with Italian practitioners assigned to the residents of the Villa Medici in Rome. Élan is his first direct-cut work, in pink Milan marble. As such, his son Jean was keen to have it included in a museum's permanent collection, and recently donated it to the Musée Thomas Henry in Cherbourg (n°inv. 2023-2-1). The studio plaster presented here was cast from marble, a regular practice for René Letourneur. With Élan, his rhetoric is already well developed: he likes to highlight the female body in poses of restrained energy, and to let the light run over these forms. His ability to use the entire block for each sculpture already appears to be one of his fundamentals (see cat. nos. 8 and 14).