ARMAN 20th century bronze sculpture signed Violin coupe II Homage to Picasso Modern art

ARMAN (1928/2005)
Violin cut II, Homage to Picasso.
Bronze with brown patina, signed on the base, Bocquel foundry, numbered 84/100 on the back on the base.
Height: 64 cm
Width: 20 cm
Depth :16,5 cm
ARMAN, born Armand Fernandez on November 17, 1928 in Nice and died in New York on October 22, 2005, is a Franco-American artist, painter, sculptor and plastic artist, renowned for his “accumulations”. He was one of the first to directly use, as pictorial material, manufactured objects, which represented for him the multiple and infinite extensions of the human hand which undergo a continuous cycle of production, consumption, destruction.
Only son of Antonio Fernandez, furniture and antiques dealer, of Spanish origin who lived in Algeria, and of Marguerite Jacquet, from a family of Loire farmers, the young Armand showed very early dispositions for the drawing and painting. After his baccalaureate, he studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Nice (now the Villa Arson), then at the Louvre School. He met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal at the judo school they attended in Nice in 1947. With these two friends, he was interested for a time in Eastern philosophies and Rosicrucian theory.
At the end of 1957, Arman, who signs his works with his first name in homage to Van Gogh, decides to abandon the “d” of Armand and formalizes his artist signature, in 1958, on the occasion of an exhibition at Iris. Clert.
In October 1960, he made the exhibition "Le Plein" where he filled Iris Clert's gallery with scrap objects and the contents of selected bins. This exhibition is the counterpoint to the exhibition "Le Vide" organized two years earlier at the same gallery by his friend Yves Klein.
Also the same month, under the leadership of the art critic Pierre Restany, Arman became, with Yves Klein, one of the founding members of the group of New Realists (proclaimed by Restany: "new perceptual approaches to reality"), alongside notably François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé, later joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Gerard Deschamps and in 1963 Christo.
From 1961, Arman developed his career in New York, where he lived and worked half of his time, alternating with his life in Nice until 1967, then in Vence until his death. In New York, he first stayed at the Chelsea Hotel until 1970, then in a loft in the SoHo district and, from 1985, in his apartment building in TriBeCa, where he died in 2005.
After his death in New York, part of his ashes were brought back to Paris in 2008 to be buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery1.
All his life, Arman was also a passionate collector of everyday objects (watches, weapons, pens…) and art objects, in particular of traditional African art of which he was a connoisseur, valued and recognized specialist.
Arman had dual nationality, French and American, acquired in 1972.
The work
Arman was interested in the status of the object and the relationship that modern societies have with it, between sacralization and overconsumption-destruction.
In 1955, the Galerie du Haut-Pavé organized his first solo exhibition in Paris.
His first “Cachets” (traces of inked or painted objects) in Paris date from 1956.
In 1959, he began the production of the “Poubelles” series: he exhibited household waste, rubbish found in the street and waste. His “accumulations” of objects following a quantitative logic which erases their singularity send back an image of profusion, at the same time as they underline the perishable character of the products of the society of abundance.
In 1960, he used plexiglass for the first time.
In 1961, he began the series of "Anger": destruction of objects (the "Cups" of violin, piano, double bass ...) skilfully glued on pedestal or on wall supports. In “Combustions” (1963), these same objects are burnt.
Between 1980 and 1999, the range of works and techniques widened. Arman declines and multiplies the various execution procedures. At the end of the 1990s, the work became more radical in a succession of gestures linked to the object (Accumulations en Relation, Cascades, Sandwiches Combo). He shows a renewed interest in painting (The Starry Night, Nec Mergitur).
A major retrospective takes place at the National Gallery of the Jeu de Paume from January to April 1998, an exhibition that brings together more than one hundred works (from 1959 to 1997). The retrospective then travels until 2001 in Germany, Portugal, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan, Spain ...
In 2000, he worked on fragmentations on panels, fragments (drawings and sculptures). It presents a thematic retrospective ("La Traversée des Objets"), at the Château de Villeneuve, in Vence (France).
His bronze sculptures take part in a similar gesture: the artist takes hold of the icons of Western art (Venus de Milo, Hercules Farnese, etc.), which he cuts up to then re-weld them in an excavated disorder.
In 2002-2003, Arman returned to easel painting in a series of works, “Serious Paintings”, which combine the recomposition of musical instruments with their “staging” in painting.
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