Jean HÉLION (1904-1987) - Lot 48

Jean HÉLION (1904-1987) Les Mannequins sold out, 1978 Acrylic on canvas monogrammed and dated "HV 78" lower right, countersigned and titled on back, annotation crossed out. Amitiés à Richard Lindner et suite pour son bonnet IV 81 130 x 97 cm A certificate from Jacqueline Hélion, dated December 19, 2000, will be given to the buyer. Online catalog raisonné, illustrated under no. 363 The Artist: The pioneer of rediscovered figuration Jean Hélion occupies a singular and heroic place in twentieth-century art history. After having been one of the leaders of geometric abstraction in the 1930s (alongside Mondrian and Van Doesburg), he made a radical turn in the aftermath of the Second World War by returning to figuration. This choice, misunderstood at the time, today makes him the absolute precursor of the Nouvelle Figuration and a master thinker for a whole generation of contemporary painters (such as Gilles Aillaud and Eduardo Arroyo). For Hélion, painting the real world was not a step backwards, but a conquest. The Theme: Mannequins, mirrors of the human comedy Painted in 1978, Les Mannequins soldés is part of one of the richest and most obsessive themes of the artist's last decades: Parisian shop windows, passers-by and everyday objects. The motif of the wax or plastic mannequin runs through Hélion's work. In the late 1970s, as his eyesight began to fail and he simplified his strokes to get to the essential, these figures took on an almost philosophical dimension: The poetry of everyday life: Hélion captures the spectacle of the street with the eye of a Baudelairean flâneur. The mannequins on sale, lined up, undressed or jostled, become the actors in an urban theater that is both ironic and melancholy. Man's double: somewhere between still life and genre scene, the mannequin is for Hélion the frozen double of the human being. The fact that they are "sold out" is a humorous reference to the fragility of the human condition and the materialism of consumer society. The persistence of the abstract gaze: beneath the figuration of artificial bodies still lurks the rigor of the abstract master. The composition of Mannequins soldés is striking for its geometric arrangement, the play of reflections in the window and a vibrant chromatic palette, characteristic of his maturity. The works of the late 1970s represent the pinnacle of Hélion's plastic freedom. Freed from detail, the painter delivers here a canvas of great narrative modernity, testifying to his undying fascination with the tumult and paradoxes of modern life. A masterpiece for understanding the legacy of this "painter of painters".