Exhibition "Sculptors and livre d’artiste"

State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin presents an exhibition of works by leading world sculptors in the publications of livre d’artiste. The exhibition features twenty-two editions of the livre d’artiste of the fifteen major sculptors: Arman, Jean Arp, Michel Gino, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Henri Laurence, Aristide Mayol, Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Mimmo Paladino, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Auguste Rodin, Eduardo Chillids, Hristo, Osip Zadkine. In addition to the livre d’artiste editions, viewers will see sculptures created by the same masters, and will be able to make sure that in a number of cases the sculptural work is close in style to the printed graphics of the same master. The basis of the exposition will be publications from the collections of collectors George Gens and Boris Friedman.

It is known that sculptors are excellent draftsmen. Thinking about future work, the sculptor works on paper its various options, thinking three-dimensionally in the plane of the drawing. The line is the common thing that combines drawing and sculpture. The very process of creating the livre d’artiste publications - the presence of separate sheets, an independent cover, a case, the principle of the layout of printed graphics, the art of typography - is similar to the creative process of creating a sculptural composition.

The exhibition "Sculptors and livre d’artiste" opens with the works of the largest sculptors of the first half of the last century, Auguste Rodin and Aristide Mayol. Not surprisingly, nudity predominates in the graphic series of the livre d’artiste editions of these masters. One of the first editions of the livre d’artiste genre was the novel “Le Jardin des supplices” by Octav Mirbo, released in 1902 by Ambroise Vollard, with Rodin’s color lithographs.

The next section of the exhibition is dedicated to the sculptors Henri Laurence and Osip Zadkine. Viewers will see two editions of the livre d’artiste with images of the Cubist period of the work of Henri Laurence. It is noteworthy that the etching image in the 1921 book Les Pélican resembles the sculpture of a master of the same period presented at the exposition. Osip Zadkin is represented by three editions of livre d’artiste, different in style and technique. A series of lithographs by the sculptor tells about the exploits of Hercules, and his etchings to the collection “Calligrammes” by Guillaume Apollinaire are a kind of commentary by the author on the poet’s work.

In a separate exhibition space are the works of Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti. Of great interest is the publication of Henry Moore’s "Elephant Skull", in which he created a series of magnificent etchings. The source for them was the donated sculpture at the time of the skull of an elephant. The series of lithographs by Alberto Giacometti dedicated to his sketches of views of Paris will not leave the visitor indifferent. Released after the death of Giacometti, it is a peculiar hymn of the artist to his beloved city.

The opening for the Russian audience will be the work in the livre d’artiste of Michel Gino and Eduardo Chillida. The graphics of the latter will be shown for the first time in Russia. Chillida, being the largest Spanish sculptor of the twentieth century, worked a lot in the genre of livre d’artiste, creating more than twenty different graphic series. The exposition presents the first and last works of Chillida in the livre d’artiste. With the graphic series of Michel Gino, the Russian viewer is familiar with the exhibition “Ilyazd. XX century Ilya Zdanevich. From private and museum collections in Russia and France ”, which was held at the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin in 2015. The audience will see the sculptural work of the master for the first time.

The exhibition coexists the works of Jean Arp and Alexander Calder. The illustrations of these sculptors are distinguished by colorfulness and imagination, the same can be said about their sculptures. Calder’s works in the livre d’artiste are on display at the museum for the first time.

The works in the livre d’artiste of Italian sculptors Marino Marini, Mimmo Paladino and Arnaldo Pomodoro are combined in one block at the exhibition. In the graphic cycles of their publications, the stylistics of their own sculptural works is absolutely recognizable. These are horses with riders in the sheets of Marini, a variety of technical and visual techniques in Paladino, abstract geometry in Pomodoro. For the editions of the livre d’artiste Paladino and Pomodoro, sculptural works were specially made that are mounted on the surface of the boxes of these publications.

The exhibition ends with a section with the works of Arman and Hristo. The edition with the graphics of Arman, as well as the editions of the livre d’artiste Paladino and Pomodoro, contains his sculpture, which is the details of a watch built into the Plexiglass array. A unique exhibit is the composition Hristo, created as a gift to the art critic Jacob Baal Teshuve, who was the author of books about the master’s work. This object is the New York Times wrapped in polyethylene and tied with a rope, which was released on Baal Teshuva’s birthday. This is perhaps the only small-format original work of Hristo, known for his projects on wrapping buildings, bridges and other large objects with fabric.

Exhibition curator, collector Boris Fridman:

What attracted sculptors to create graphic series for livre d’artiste editions? What is common between these seemingly completely different types of art? An attempt to understand this phenomenon led me to realize the unified nature of the sculpting process and the creation of the livre d’artiste - where the construction of the publication is built as a kind of virtual sculptural object. The naturalness and logic of such a combination of different types of creativity in the activity of sculptors, which opened up for me, led me to think of another exhibition project that would clearly demonstrate, on the one hand, the originality of the sculptors’ graphics in livre d’artiste, and on the other, the unity of these works with the nature and style of their sculptural work.

Director of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkina Marina Loshak:

Our museum with special attention belongs to the genre of the "book of the artist." Over the past few years, we have done seven projects that introduced the viewer to the leading masters of this field. “Sculptors and livre d’artiste” is the first exhibition in our practice, focused exclusively on the work of sculptors. Its conceptual feature is that, together with the editions, the sculptural works of the same masters are presented in the exposition.

A catalog with detailed descriptions and images of all the works on display has been prepared for the opening of the exhibition. The catalog contains an article about the previously unknown manuscript of Osip Zadkine dated 1945, fragments of the manuscript and their translations into Russian are given.

An educational program will be held as part of the exhibition project, including lectures and meetings with leading art historians, sculptors, artists, publishers. It is planned to organize round tables on the subject of the exhibition with the invitation of specialists, watching films. Meetings are planned in the exhibition halls with the curator of the exhibition, with artists, art critics, who will share with the audience their perceptions of the work of sculptors in the publications of livre d’artiste.