Germaine Richier: Sculptor of Metamorphosis

The exhibition is an invitation to discover the highly singular and complex world of an artist whose spirit César poignantly summed up: “Germaine is like cutting a lobster in two: there is lots going on inside.” The visit highlights the key moments in her activity, from her early career to her final research. Her numerous hybridizations referencing the world of nature, such as L’Homme forêt (1945), La Femme-coq (1954) or La Sauterelle (1945), are also brought to the fore in this presentation.

Richier’s work was strongly marked by the experience of World War II, which broke out while she was on a trip to Switzerland, where she remained in exile until the end of the war. Far from the naturalism of her early work, the humanity she then figured adopted a new form, revealing a tragic vision of the unbearable reality of the horrors of war: man in torment, his flesh riven; gnawed, shredded surfaces pitted with holes in an aesthetic blurring the line between figuration and disfigurement.

The idea of metamorphosis made its way into her work, probably in an attempt to regenerate humankind; references to the plant and animal kingdoms conceived a distinctive visual world spawning multiple unique hybridizations, turning her into a creator of monsters whose forms seem frozen on the brink of implosion, submitting to the power of natural forces.
If Germaine Richier’s formal research followed the footsteps of her illustrious predecessors, the renewed human expression at play in her production echoed the existential questions of postwar society, recomposing the break between abstraction and representation.