René Iché (21 January 1897 – 23 December 1954) was a 20th-century French

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Life and work

René Iché was born in Sallèles-d'Aude,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. He fought in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, where he was injured and gassed. After the war, he earned a degree in

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

, but also studied

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

with

Antoine Bourdelle Antoine Bourdelle (30 October 1861 – 1 October 1929), born Émile Antoine Bordelles, was an influential and prolific French sculptor and teacher. He was a student of Auguste Rodin, a teacher of Giacometti and Henri Matisse, and an importan ...

and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

with

Auguste Perret Auguste Perret (12 February 1874 – 25 February 1954) was a French architect and a pioneer of the architectural use of reinforced concrete. His major works include the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the first Art Deco building in Paris; the ...

. In 1927, his pacific monument of

Ouveillan Ouveillan (; oc, Auvelhan) is a commune in the Aude department in southern France. Sights include the church of St. John the Evangelist, built in Romanesque style during the 11th-12th centuries. It has a large choir area with three apses, w ...

(a Monumental Modern church in the South of France) was well received. During his first solo exhibition, at the art dealer

Léopold Zborowski Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932) was a Polish poet, writer and art dealer. He was born in Zaleszczyki into a Jewish family. Zborowski and his wife Anna (Hanka Zborowska) were contemporaries with Parisian artists such as Chaïm Soutine, André De ...

in 1931, two sculptures were acquired by the

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. In 2021 it ranked 10th in t ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

(now in the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

) and the

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte (river), Rotte'') is the second largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the Prov ...

.*Robert Maillard, ''Dictionary of Modern Sculpture'', 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141.*Michel Seuphor, ''The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture''. 1959. Zwemmer. Page 282. In 1928, he married his model Rosa Achard, known as Renée. His daughter

Laurence Laurence is an English and French given name (usually female in French and usually male in English). The English masculine name is a variant of Lawrence and it originates from a French form of the Latin ''Laurentius'', a name meaning "man fro ...

, who later became a writer, was a model for some of his work. Pereetfils

Iché was a very good friend of Max Jacob, close to

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Jacques Lipchitz Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of ...

, Zadkine and a childhood friend of

Joë Bousquet Joë Bousquet (; 19 March 1897 – 28 September 1950) was a French poet. Bousquet was born in Narbonne. Wounded on 27 May 1918 at Vailly near the Aisne battlelines at the end of the First World War, he was paralysed for the rest of his life, and ...

. He sculpted the faces of

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first '' Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

and

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

. In his studio of

Montparnasse Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ...

, in 1937, he executed a ''

Guernica Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the m ...

'' sculpture on the day (27 April 1937) of the announcement of this event on the radio station. Upon completing the work he did not wish to exhibit it. He was amongst the 200 pioneers of the

French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

– he was in the

Groupe du musée de l'Homme The ''Groupe du musée de l'Homme'' (French for 'Group of the Museum of Man') was a movement in the French resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War. In July 1940, after the Appeal of 18 June from Charles de Gaulle, a resis ...

– during the summer of 1940 and participated at the

Degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

exhibitions. He sculpted so ''La Déchirée'' (''The Torn''), which was brought to London and given to General

Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Governm ...

, became one of the symbols of the French Resistance. He participated at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

in 1948 with ''Le Couple'' ( Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) and received the ''Grand Prix de Sculpture'' in 1953 for ''Melpomène 36''. His work was also part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the

1948 Summer Olympics The 1948 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and also known as London 1948) were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, England, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus ...

. He was chosen to sculpt ''the Apollinaire Monument'' in ParisPeter Read, Picasso and Apollinaire. Ed. University Presses Of California, Columbia And Princeton (United States), April 2008. and an ''

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

' Memorial'' in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, but both projects were interrupted by his premature death in Paris. Iché's work is close to

surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

and like the sculptors

Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...

and

Germaine Richier Germaine Richier (16 September 1902 – 21 July 1959) was a French sculptor. Born in Grans, Richier began her studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montpellier, in the atelier of Louis-Jacques Guigues; in 1926 she went to work with Antoine Bo ...

inherits an aesthetic born from the workshop of Antoine Bourdelle.

Film

Jean-Pierre Melville Jean-Pierre Melville (; born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker and actor. Among his films are ''Le Silence de la mer'' (1949), '' Bob le flambeur'' (1956), ''Le Doulos'' (1962), '' Le Samouraï'' (19 ...

's film '' Army of Shadows'' (''L'Armée des ombres'', 1969) is based, like the novel of

Joseph Kessel Joseph Kessel (10 February 1898 – 23 July 1979), also known as "Jef", was a French journalist and novelist. He was a member of the Académie française and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. Biography Kessel was born to a Jewish family in ...

, on the Resistance network to which Iché belonged, Cohors-Asturies. The character of Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse) is inspired by Iché.

References

*''Bibliographic Guide to Art and Architecture'', 1978. G.K. Hall. Page 488. *Jane Clapp, ''Sculpture Index''. 1970. Scarecrow Press. x pages. Page 459. *Robert Maillard, ''Dictionary of Modern Sculpture'', 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141. *Michel Seuphor, ''The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture''. 1959. Zwemmer. 372 pages. Page 282. *Julian Park, ''The culture of France in our time''. 1954. Cornell University Press. 345 pages. Page 87 *Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, ''Index of Artists, International-biographical Including Painters, Sculptors ...'' 1935. R.R. Bowker Co. 493 pages. . Page 136.

External links

Official WebsiteFrench TV show (english subtitles), ''Guernica'' by René Ichéartist pagePompidou Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iche, Rene 1897 births 1954 deaths Modern sculptors French surrealist artists Recipients of the Croix de Guerre (France) Recipients of the Legion of Honour Artists from Paris French military personnel of World War I French Resistance members School of Paris 20th-century French sculptors French male sculptors Olympic competitors in art competitions

Life and work

Film

See also

References

External links