Write the women’s body

Let’s discover how the great Masters of Modern Art dealt with the eternal and timeless theme of the female nude.

By stripping the body, ridding it of all artifices, an artist suspends time and makes his subject timeless and universal.

The female body was an infinite source of inspiration for Maillol.

Always in search of harmony like the sculptors of ancient Greece, Maillol sought a balance of forms and volumes. Through his drawings and sculptures, all in roundness, female figures embodied his perception of beauty and elegance.

Aristide Maillol
Femme nue allongée de dos
Pencil
18 x 21,5 cm

Fautrier’s nudes are just as sculptural even though they are sketched.

Even though Fautrier did not claim to belong to any particular school, he nevertheless used this sanguine technique worthy of the Academician painters.

In a breathtaking way, he sublimated the voluptuous forms of the body and among others, of his companion and model, Andrée Pierson. With effects of light and shadow, his nudes are far from idealized. They are real and sensual. 

Jean Fautrier
Nu debout
Red chalk
37,2 x 24,5 cm

The female nude haunted Helion’s work after the Second World War.

Wanting “cathedral” nudes, he created “temples of flesh”. The nude became monumental as in the Nude with the plant of 1949.

The nude female also became a “Temple of Life” in this 1947 watercolor which is a study for the monumental oil, Men and the Nude. Overthrown and framed by two men, she is observed, dreamed up or even fantasized.

Hélion plunges us into a binary world where reality becomes dreams. Real or unreal, the woman becomes an object of desire. 

Jean Hélion
Les hommes et le nu
1947
Watercolor
25 x 35 cm

Gromaire, meanwhile, uses his firm and rigorous pencil stroke to draw and paint his architectural nudes.

Hieratic, idealized but imbued with a certain eroticism, they are an invitation into the hushed and intimate atmosphere of his studio.

Note the modernity of this oil from 1929 that seduced Maurice Girardin, friend, patron and collector of the artist. In the 1942 watercolor, the Nude guides our gaze to this window open to the ocean. 

Marcel Gromaire
Femme nue assise à la fenêtre
1942
Watercolour and ink on paper
31 x 23,5 cm

For André Marchand, a major figure in figurative painting in the middle of the twentieth century, the model woman faded and gave way to an idol.

In the workshop, flooded with sunlight and framed by a silent black, the nude becomes mysterious and a pretext for a contemplative quest. 

André Marchand
La Femme au mur vert 
1948-1950
Oil on canvas
91 X 73 cm
Signed lower left, titled and countersigned on the back

These works can be discovered on the walls of our stand at the Fine Arts Paris show which will be held from 6 to 11 November 2021 at the Carrousel du Louvre. These nudes will also be surrounded by works by Boudin, Jongkind, Sonia Delaunay, Signac… and many others.

To see other available works by these artists or to find out more, we invite you to consult the pages dedicated to them:
– Aristide Maillol
– Jean Fautrier
– Jean Hélion
– Marcel Gromaire
– André Marchand