Germaine Richier (1902-1959) - Lot 203

Germaine Richier (1902-1959) Christ of Assy, small Model created in 1950 Bronze with brown patina Signed "G. Richier Bears the founder's mark "L. THINOT Fondt PARIS" and the number "H.C. 1". H. 44.5 cm Provenance: Collection of the family of the painter Claudio Castelucho-Diana; by descent, Paris Related works - Germaine Richier, Christ d'Assy, 1950, bronze, H. 135 x W. 138 cm, Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, église Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce du Plateau d'Assy ; - Germaine Richier, Le Christ d'Assy I, small, 1950, plaster, 44 x 32.5 x 8 cm, Paris, Centre Pompidou, inv. AM 2021-434. Related literature: - Gérard Monnier, "Actualité de l'art sacré", in L'Art en Europe, les années décisives : 1945-1953, cat.exp., Saint-Etienne, musée d'art moderne, Genève, Skira, 1987, pp. 48-53; - Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, Germaine Richer : rétrospective, cat.exp., Saint-Paul, Fondation Maeght, April 5-June 25, 1996, Saint Paul, Fondation Maeght, 1996, model reproduced under no. 37, p. 92; - Claude Mary on the creation of Christ d'Assy, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the consecration of the Assy church in 2000; - Laurence Durieu, Germaine Richier: l'Ouragane, Lyon, Fage éditions, 2023; - Ariane Coulondre (ed.), Germaine Richier, cat. exp. Paris, Centre Pompidou, March 1-June 12, 2023, Montpellier, Musée Fabre, July 12-November 5, 2023, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2023, pp. 36-43, model reproduced on p. 157; - Sophie Guiter, Françoise Guiter, Germaine Richier: vie et œuvre, catalog raisonné de l'œuvre sculpté, t. 1, 1916-1946, Milan, Silvana Editoriale, 2024. - The book by Laurence Durieu, "Germaine Richier, Le Christ interdit", Fage Éditions, will be published on April 11, 2025. This Christ on the Cross was commissioned in 1950 for the altar of Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce church in Plateau d'Assy, Haute-Savoie. Canon Jean Devémy (1896-1981), chaplain to one of the many sanatoriums on the Plateau d'Assy, initiated the construction of this church between 1938 and 1946. In 1950, at the height of the revival of sacred art, the canon, with the support of Fathers Couturier and Régamey, editors of the magazine L'Art sacré, invited the most prominent artists of the day to help decorate the building. Georges Rouault, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Jacques Lipchitz and Jean Lurçat accompanied the canon in a project that modernized the traditional iconography of the Catholic Church. Together with Father Couturier, they commissioned Germaine Richier to create a large Christ on the Cross for the choir altar. Richier's Christ caused a scandal a few months after the church's inauguration. In a complete break with the idea of the Saint-Sulpician representation of Christ destined to rise again, victorious and triumphant, advocated by the Vatican at the time, Assy's Christ, humble and fragile, profoundly human in the suffering and decay of his body, was accused of miserabilism. The war was still very much on everyone's mind, and the Church, which wanted to be a source of comfort and hope, failed to perceive in Richier's radical Christ the mystical message of a meeting between humanity and the divine proposed by the sculptress. The work was taken down, hidden away and relocated several times before finally returning to the choir of the Assy church in 1969. Our copy, known as Le Christ d'Assy, petit, is a bronze print of one of the two models presented by the artist to the commissioners in 1950. Although the Thinot foundry was active from 1947, it was in 1953, when Lucien Thinot and Germaine Richier met, that the company really took off. Lucien and Pierre Thinot were to cast the vast majority of Germaine Richier's small-scale works in bronze.