Philippe Hiquily (1925-2013)

Lot 141
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Estimation :
100000 - 150000 EUR
Philippe Hiquily (1925-2013)
African Queen (The black goddess), 1953 Autogenous welded and embossed sheet metal, flame-blued and oiled Unique piece H. 176 - W. 53 - D. 60 cm Provenance : Former Zachary Scott collection, New York Former Morabito collection Exhibitions : Philippe Hiquily, Iron 1954-1958, Paris, Galerie Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand, 26 September-25 October 1997; Paris, Galerie Palmes, 1955. Bibliography: Alexandra Marini, Tara Hiquily, Jean-François Roudillon, Philippe Hiquily: catalog raisonné, 1948-2011, Loft éditions, 2012, vol. 1, p. 77 ; " Les surprises de Thierry Salvador ", in Vogue Décoration, n°39, August-September 1992, p. 34 ; François Jonquet, Hiquily : le métal direct, Paris, Cercle d'art, 1992, view of the workshop pp.10-11 ; Michel Le Brun, Le chemin de la mémoire et de l'inspiration : Paris-Concremiers, cat. exp., Espace Art Brenne, June 8-September 8, 1991, Le Blanc : éditeur espace Art Brenne, 1991, p. 73 ; Chen Yen-Fong, "Huiquily, eroticism, movement and humor in sculptures," in Artist, n°112, Taiwan-Taipei, September 1984, p. 164. In his introduction to the 2011 catalog raisonné of Philippe Hiquily's work, art critic Alain Jouffroy presents this artist as the inventor of a Western "primitive art. This is undoubtedly the term that best suits African Queen, a remarkable work, the genesis of a multiform creation that makes Philippe Hiquily one of the great sculptors of the post-war period. Philippe Hiquily studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1959 and attended the workshops of sculptors Marcel Gimond and Alfred Janniot where his passion for sculpture was born. He befriended César, Albert Féraud and Germaine Richier who supported him and ordered bases for his sculptures. He then sculpted mainly bust portraits. The artist confronts all mediums: plaster, clay or ceramics. Not obtaining what he was looking for through these materials, Hiquily improvised himself as a scrap metal dealer and searched for a new source of inspiration around different recycled metals. Always around the human figure, his works grow and become more vertical. After having tried different techniques, Hiquily, impressed by the work of Julio Gonzalez, turns to a method inspired by ancient Greece, the "sphyrelaton". This process consists of riveting or welding together strips of hammered sheet metal. African Queen is the result of both this plastic research and the sculptor's assiduous attendance at the Musée de l'Homme. Hiquily was attracted by the ambiguity between art and the sacred and confronted primitive art, particularly Oceanic art. African Queen is the fruit of this questioning; this totemic and provocative sculpture with archaic forms, which exhibits its surgical welds like scarifications, is an essential milestone in the artist's career. Presented at the Palmes gallery in Paris in 1955, then in New York in 1959, African Queen was praised by the critics. Nevertheless, Hiquily resumed his quest for new forms of representation of the human figure. His encounter with Calder's work was a revelation! Hiquily then turned to a less dense, less frontal and lighter sculpture. This new aesthetic with its fragile balance will never leave him and it is in this sense that African Queen is of considerable importance in his development. It is at the same time a birth, an achievement and a turning point in his long, rich and plural career.
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