Prune Nourry: Visionnaires

As part of her exhibition "Visionaries", the Petit Palais has invited Prune Nourry to take over its spaces, highlighting little-known female sculptors and artists overlooked by art history.

At Nourry’s request, three art historians spent a year researching eighteen female sculptors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Käthe Kollwitz, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Hélène Bertaux, Jane Poupelet, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Selma Hortense Burke, Daria Gamsaragan and Sarah Bernhardt. Inspired by their work and commitment, Nourry created sculpted portraits of these pioneering women, displayed throughout the museum, on its forecourt and in its gardens.

The exhibition begins with Mothership, a hybrid figure combining a pregnant woman and a rusted ship hull. In the North Pavilion, the eighteen portraits enter into dialogue with the museum’s permanent collection and around twenty works from Nourry’s Holy Daughters and Venus series.

Visitors can also discover white marble eyes with black pupils, embedded in Nourry’s plaster busts and the museum’s pedestals. Inspired by the Petit Palais’s polychrome statuary, they create a visual dialogue across eras, from antiquity to the present.

Plaster is Nourry’s primary material, echoing the museum’s collection, where nearly 70% of sculptures are studio plasters.