• Home
• Members
• Join
• Members Area
• Commissions
• Art History
• Links
• Contact Us

Germaine Richier

Born – Grans, France 1904

Died – Montepier, France 1959

Germaine Richier was primarily a sculptor, although she also made engravings, book illustrations and ceramics. From 1925-1929, Richier trained as a carver under Bourdelle in Paris. Briefly influenced by Surrealism, she began to make bronze figurative sculptures that, with their spindly limbs, were not entirely dissimilar to those by Giacometti, also a pupil of Bourdelle. However, Richier developed an increasingly idiosyncratic style, using sculpture to represent ambivalent, amorphous, asexual beings whose bodies at once suggested human, animal, plant and insect life. Through battered and lacerated surfaces, Richier suggested a morbid concern with decay and decomposition. In Water she has created a metaphor to express her deep fears and anxieties. The human figure alone seems incapable of containing her charged emotions – a woman depicted as a water carrier becomes a vessel of both emptiness and retention. Richier’s feelings for sculpture as an emotional site, as well as her emphasis on the space significantly to a reputation that has grown steadily since the Second World War.

Masterpieces:

• The Ant
• The Bullfight

Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.

Validate > CSS |

© Electricgallery.co.uk
> Site design Luka Cvrk
> Logo design The Artz Enchantress