Tourism and Heritage Magazine | In the Grand Est, seven exhibitions and a symposium dedicated to Ipoustéguy, giant of sculpture

No one is a prophet in his own country. Rarely has the expression been so correct! Known throughout the world for the monumental sculptures that he sowed there throughout his life, and whose artistic power is not measured only by size, the Meusien artist Ipoustéguy is still unfortunately only too few renowned in the Grand Est.

Which Lorraine passing through Lyon identifies the huge bronzes adorning the Place Louis Pradel, including the majestic Louise Labé twirling from her 3.30 m high, like sculptures made by an artist “from his home”? Who knows that the greatest work carried out by a single sculptor in the XXe century, deploying in about thirty tons in Berlin its 20 m long and 6.5 m high, is “Man builds his city”, from Ipoustéguy? And why does not everyone rush to Bar-le-Duc (55) to be moved by “The man passing the door” enthroned on the forecourt of the Hôtel du Département?

2020, the year of Ipoustéguy

These sculptures are however those of an artist, certainly well known abroad since in 1968 his “Death of the father” became in Melbourne the most expensive work purchased by a museum from a living sculptor, but who also been famous enough in France to discuss poetry with De Gaulle, to be decorated by Jack Lang of the Legion of Honor or to be ordered a sculpture of Rimbaud by Mitterrand. “He is represented in public collections, major international institutions bought his sculptures, but when he disappeared he was no longer known except to specialists”, notes Thierry Dechezleprêtre, curator of the Mudaac in Épinal (88). Departmental museum of ancient and contemporary art which has unhesitatingly associated itself with the Department of Meuse, as the Arthur Rimbaud museum in Charleville-Mézières (08), to make 2020 the year of Ipoustéguy.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, it was indeed time for his native “country” to rekindle the spotlight on the life and work of this little man of immense talent. Especially since he was not only born Jean Robert in 1920 in Dun-sur-Meuse (55), died Ipoustéguy in 2006 in Doulcon (55), but his artistic production seems to be nourished by that of his illustrious predecessor from Meuse. : Ligier Richier, born around 1500 in Saint-Mihiel (55). The artistic influence of the great diffuser of the new spirit of the Renaissance is there, on edge of skin scratched alive.

It is only to see at Doulcon cultural center the plaster study of “Petit écorché” by Ipoustéguy, which in 1976 led to his overwhelming “Comic scene of modern life” evoking the death of her daughter Céline, barely 10 years old, to immediately think of the famous “Skeleton “Of XVIe century whose arm extends towards the vault of the Saint-Étienne church of Bar-le-Duc (55). The strength of the representation of movement and the passage of time, so dear to Ipoustéguy, even makes it possible to imagine that another skeleton could also one day rise from its marble matrix at the church of Dun-sur-Meuse. Where today is visible the “Death of Bishop Neumann”, refused to the artist by the American ecclesiastical authorities who had commissioned it in 1976 to honor their first saint.

It is certain that the sculpture of Ipoustéguy, of a realism without glitter, is not the type to aesthetically flatter the Bishop of Philadelphia! If the artist preferred to remember that this man died “in total destitution and perfect indifference”, representing passers-by around the dying person continuing their way, while the saint, for his part, still holds out his hand so that a bird finds refuge there, it is to better symbolize its faith in the human capacity to recover after the tests, by supporting one the other. As when, with a cylinder slipped under the arms of his character, the sculptor offers the viewer of “Val de Grâce” the feeling of being able to help the injured person to get up. We suffer, but we keep moving forward.

A new form of beauty, steeped in ideal and fragility

“This new form of beauty, steeped in ideal and fragility, developed by Ipoustéguy, will take a long time to establish itself”, notes Françoise Monnin, art historian and scientific curator of the event organized by the Department of Meuse. “This mixture of tradition and topicality, difficult to accept by political authorities – for whom monumentality and vulnerability constitute opposing qualities – will be the cause of many heated debates! “As proof, the seven years it took the French military authorities to accept that” Val de Grâce “adorns the entrance to the hospital of the same name in 1984, while Ipoustéguy had sculpted at their request in 1977 this 2.20 m high room on the imposed theme of “helping the fighting man”… and that everything is there. Even the famous broken mouths of a Great War which irrigates the Meuse so much that it could only inspire Ipoustéguy. Himself is a lively skinned. Who continues to move forward, taking out what he has in his guts without ever trying to please, without hesitating to perch on the roof of his studio in Choisy-le-Roi (94) to erect his monumental works. To observe its shadow. To say again and again so much with simple pieces of metal. And it is no coincidence that the bodies he represents are so often lacerated.

After his father in 1968, whose face he incorporated in his commemoration of Pope John XXIII for the “Death of the Father”, it was his mother, whose maiden name he had taken as his artist’s name, who succumbed in 1971 with breast cancer. And of which he makes the emaciated and mutilated body the subject of the “Mother’s Agony”. When in 1974 the phone rang to announce the death of his eldest daughter, Ipoustéguy was in Carrara, carving the famous marble from which the ancient statues are made, the very ones that had made him fall into figuration. human in full age of abstraction. Céline will never leave him, even giving her features to the little blind girl whose face is as though hanging from Bishop Neumann’s bedside.

Thousands of drawings as well as numerous archives

It is his sister Marie-Pierre Robert, four years his junior, who watches today with their mother, Françoise, over the countless treasures that Marie Lecasseur, the general commissioner of the centenary event Ipoustéguy, discovered in the barn of the Doulcon farm (55). Where the sculptor had wanted to settle in 2003, a few hundred meters from his birthplace. Where he died in 2006 before being buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. And where he has classified thousands of drawings as well as numerous archives in addition to storing innumerable sculptures: the curators working together to rediscover him have been spoiled for choice when it comes to setting up their exhibitions! Enough to enjoy the lesser-known aspects of a man who was also a powerful painter and subtle writer. Many of its 600 sculptures may be visible all over the world, the Meuse has not finished giving back to Ipoustéguy what belongs to Ipoustéguy!

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