Fine Arts Paris 2026
Overview
C23
This year, for its third appearance at Fine Arts Paris, which will take place at the Grand Palais from 19 to 23 September, the Galerie Jean-François Cazeau (Stand C23) is presenting an exhibition showcasing 20th-century sculpture, whilst remaining true to its affinity for surrealism and post-war abstraction.
Sculpture in the Spotlight – for this edition of Fine Arts Paris, the Galerie Jean-François Cazeau is presenting a stand centred on 20th-century sculpture: Germaine Richier, César, Giuseppe Penone and Eva Jospin, who bridges the gap to contemporary art. The common thread linking these artists is their use of recycled materials. Born in 1902 and trained in Bourdelle’s studio, Germaine Richier was one of the pioneers of existentialist sculpture in the post-war period, alongside Alberto Giacometti, forging new images of the human condition. This revitalisation of the human figure is achieved through the art of recycling and a quest for balance – in the early 1950s, Germaine Richier found a fragment of an ancient amphora on the beach at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. From this fragment, Richier fashioned a seated woman, with the neck of the vase and its handles forming the headless figure. The voluptuous curves of the torso contrast with the slenderness of the legs, evoking fertility. Yet in *L’Eau*, the power of erosion is evident in the deep grooves of the bronze, hollowed out at the level of the abdomen, as if subjected to erosion. On the still-wet clay, the artist scattered seaweed gathered from the beaches.
Germaine Richier was the first in a line of great female sculptors of the 20th century, such as Louise Bourgeois and Niki de Saint Phalle. Her radical art forms a link between Rodin and César’s welded iron works. Giuseppe Penone, an Arte Povera artist, and Eva Jospin both draw on forms from the natural world, rendered in unusual materials – Penone’s ‘stripped’ trees in bronze and leather, or Eva Jospin’s rock-like caves made of cardboard.
This selection is complemented by major figures from the pre- and post-war École de Paris, demonstrating Paris’s international standing as an artistic centre of modernity: works by Pablo Picasso and Moïse Kisling, pastels by Hans Hartung from the 1940s, Simon Hantaï’s crumpled works, ink drawings by Zao Wou-KI and Chu Teh-Chun, and a monumental canvas by Victor Vasarely from 1965, to name but a few.