Robert Wlérick
Robert Wlérick (Mount-with-Marsan, April 13rd 1882 - Paris, March 7th 1944), sculptor.
Biography
His/her father is cabinetmaker and holds a store of antiquities street of the Old Castle. It is with the college that its professor Ismaël Morin notices his gifts for the drawing. From 1897, the young man works in the family workshop with Mount-of-Marsan and is devoted to the techniques of the statuary with Morin. Then it leaves to study at the School of the Art schools of Toulouse during five years, of 1889 with 1904.After his military service, Robert Wlérick settles in Paris. In the museums, he discovers the ancient sculpture and turns to the Italian sculptors of the Quattrocento. Instead of being registered at the School of the Art schools where the teaching, based on the realistic representation of the models, appears very distant to him from its artistic convictions, it follows the courses of study according to the alive model. Then it makes knowledge, via its elder and friendly Charles Despiau, of a group of sculptors called the “Band with Schnegg” (expert at Rodin). Little by little, it renews its approach of the sculpture completely and is devoted to an art of synthesis and interpretation stripped more and more, where all the decorative details are gummed. It destroys the early works of the Mons workshop but there remain fortunately the child with the shoes , gift of Morin to the museum Despiau-Wlérick, a very liked work of the visitors. Good example of the beginnings of the artist, this figure with the amusing expression expensive brings a savor completely characteristic of the anecdotic style to the French sculpture of the 19th century.
In 1913, Robert Wlérick starts to teach at the School Germain Pilon, the School of the Applied arts and the the Large-Thatched cottage. Starting from 1907, Robert Wlérick exposes to the living room of the National company of the Art schools and in 1917, takes part with Bourdelle, Dejean, Despiau and Maillol with the foundation of the Living room of Tileries. It also takes part in the Living room of the Artists decorators, with the International exhibition of decorative arts of 1925 where it is represented by four works and regularly sends works to the Salon of autumn.
He dies of disease and deprivation in 1944. During its last moments, in its be delirious, it continues to draw.
Work
The art of Robert Wlérick is characterized by a strong intensity in the plastic construction industry, finding its result in the works carried out as from 1925. Greeted by its contemporaries like the heir to Jean Goujon, it is its life lasting in the search of a calm, serene, balanced and stripped art, refusing “talkative” realism as well as the declamation and lyricism.the landaise with the capulet
After the armistice of 1918, like much of sculptors of its time, Robert Wlérick takes part in the construction of the war memorials the which set up in all the communes of France as in the other belligerent countries. Between 1918 and 1920, it thus receives orders of the towns of Labrit, Morcenx and Saugnacq-and-Low wall. One of the details most outstanding of the War memorials ordered by the town of Labrit, is the " landaise with the capulet" , whose face is that of the wife of the sculptor. Extracted from a study half-size, it is presented to the museum of Mount-of-Marsan. It will draw several specimens (out of bronze and terra cotta) from this bust and bronze is signed " Wlérik".
the statue of the Foch marshal and the quarrel of the kepi
In June 1936, Robert Wlérick is invited by the Committee chaired by the Général Weygand, to take part in a contest restricted to carry out the equestrian statue of the Maréchal Foch, Place of Trocadéro on the hill of Chaillot. For this monumental order it joins his friend and raises Raymond Martin (1910-1992), with which it had already collaborated in 1935 for a monument in the memory of the king Albert Ier of Belgium. The representation of the Foch marshal, naked head, shocks the staff and the elected officials of the commission in charge of the choice of the prize winner, but thanks to the solved support of the doctor Albert Besson, then vice-president of the general advice of the the Seine and large war wounded, the order is allotted to Robert Wlérick in December 1936.
The monument is not completed with not died of the Mons sculptor on March 7th, 1944 and it is Raymond Martin which completes the statue in spite of the difficulties of the Occupation.
In the personality of the Marshal Foch (1851 - 1929) which was distinguished with the Marne and in the Flandres in 1914 before directing the Bataille of the Sum in 1916 and ordering the allied troops in 1918 that it led to the victory, Wlérick and Martin make a point of emphasizing the personality of the military thinker. He is represented naked head and its decided air would not have been visible with the port of the kepi. In this effigy is expressed a glorious interpretation of the famous equestrian statue of Marc Aurèle with the Capitole of Rome, taken again by the relentless Gattamelata of Donatello to Padoue. The simplicity of the plans reduced to the maximum, the geometrical rate of the prestigious ride continue with frankness and purity in the pressing attitude of the marshal. “It is Foch itself, with its splendid face, distinguished, voluntary and very human”. The eight height meters base is designed by the architects Carlu, Boileau and Azéma. The selected animal is a horse of weapons to the broad breast piece, squater than the thorough-breds than liked to assemble Foch, but the thorough-bred was not appropriate for the mass of a monument to the so gigantic proportions.
A wood maquettte required by the Minister for the Art schools, Jean Zay, is remarkably carried out, size of execution, in 1939 with the site then envisaged: the esplanade enters the two wings of the Palais of Chaillot. This single work, presenting fine wood slats on an interior reinforcement, was offered by the Martin heirs to the Despiau-Wlérick Museum in 1992, three months after the death of the sculptor who took of it great care in one of his workshops of Cachan. It is currently in storage facilities with Mount-of-Marsan. The families Wlérick and Martin offered thereafter studies and models relating to the equestrian statue of the Marshal. The Despiau-Wlérick museum also has the head of the Marshal and the head of the horse, fragments preserved of the original model and presented in the Wlérick room.
other important orders
Robert Wlérick takes part in the International exhibition of Arts and Techniques of 1937 with other orders, such Zeus for the House of Electricity, the Offering for the Petit Palais, and the Youth, exposed to the “independent Masters of Art”.
Zeus was the subject of a single bronze cast iron, property of the Company Parisian of Distribution of Electricity, and currently exposed to the head office of EDF, 23 rue de Vienne 75008 Paris. From this work whose museum of Mount-of-Marsan present the tinted original plaster, the sculptor extracted the Chest from Zeus completely reinterpreted, also called “Chest of athlete”. The light passes differently on this tight and tended chest, which offers the vision of a healthy and exalté body and whose Patrice Dubois will say: “It is not an inch of modelled which is not sealed by a quivering”. Work is limited to eight specimens and four tests of artists. The first cast iron belongs to the collections of the National museum of Modern art. Specimen 3/8 belongs to the Despiau-Wlérick museum.
Always within the framework of the International exhibition of Arts and Techniques of 1937, Robert Wlérick carries out Pomone for the decoration of the new Palate of Chaillot. The museum of Mount-of-Marsan present a bronze draft for the stone statue placed at the foot of the staircase Is of Chaillot. Work is modelled in a sitting. Bronze pulling is limited to ten specimens, two tests of artist and this cast iron presented to the Despiau-Wlérick museum.
Rolande
In 1937 Robert Wlérick conceives in the beginning the project of a 5 meters height statue, symbol of France, and carries out drafts plasters some according to ten different states. Two enlargings are made out of bronze, one 84 cm height towards 1940, another of 125 cm in 1942 - 1943 (foundry of Coubertin). The sculptor gave to this work, specimen of his attachment to the female figure, the name of his model, Rolande .
Posterity
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His wife will continue to promote her work and it will take part in the organization of an important retrospective of works of Wlérick with the painter Maurice Boitel with the Living room of the National company of the Art schools in the Années 1960.
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In 1994, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of dead of Wlérick, four French museums whose Bourdelle museum in Paris and the museum of Mount-of-Marsan organize a traditional exposition with the studies, drafts and drawings. In 1991 is published an anthology of texts. The year 1999 is marked by the publication of the acts of the conference of 1995. Thus continues the handing-over with the honor of very personal work of a modern sculptor who likes the pure sculpture based on the human body and particularly the portrait and the naked one because it sees there, according to Paul Roudié, “a with dimensions eternal”.
The son of Robert Wlérick is the astronomer Gerard Wlérick, member of the Institut of France.
Works
Principal works of the artist are exposed to the Musée of Mount-of-Marsan, with those of the other Mons sculptor, Charles Despiau.