Jean Chauvin
Subtitle: l'ombre atomique
By: auteur, Paul-Louis Rinuy ; conception, Tim Onderbeke, Victor Guénard, Viktor Van den Braembussche
Contributors: Chauvin, Jean-Gabriel, 1889-1976, sculptor; Atelier Jespers (Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Belgium)
Publisher: MER
Published: 2021
Place of publication: Ghent
Language: fre
Number of pages: 79
ISBN-13: 9789463934671
Copyright date: 2021
Subjects: Exhibitions; Abstract Sculpture
Other titles: Ombre atomique
Description: French artist Jean Chauvin (1889-1976) is considered one of the pioneers of abstract sculpture of the early 20th century. His oeuvre is characterized by its highly stylized shapes and pure forms in bronze, wood and plaster, intermediating between abstraction and figuration. He touches on themes such as human animality and sexuality, nature, sensuality, architecture, technology and futurism. Among his contemporaries are Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp and Ossip Zadkine, with whom he exhibited in the 1950s. In 1962 he represented France during the Biennale of Venice. Throughout his artistic career, Jean Chauvin obsessively photographed his sculptures, and granted these images a certain autonomy. In his photography, Chauvin applied a documentary aesthetic, by which all factors that would project his personality are supposed to vanish in the interest of displaying the sculpture alone, stripped of all circumstance or context. In order to delicately magnify the contrast of light, shadow, colour and material, the works are placed against a solid black or white background in a highly illuminated space. A subtly balanced play of light and shadow reveals graceful surface details and planar shifts.
Notes: Chiefly illustrated.

Limited edition of 500 copies.

Parallel texts in French and English.

On the occasion of an exhibition held at Atelier Jespers, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, December 19, 2020-March 27, 2021.