Gérard Lanvin

Sculptor, 1923-2018

Gérard Lanvin was an enigma. He was a sculptor of enormous talent and a man who, at various times in his life, was within the circles of giants of the art world, artists like Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Gimond, Germaine Richier, and Alberto Giacometti, and had some connections to Picasso. While he earned official recognition throughout his career—winning the Prix Fénéon de Sculpture when he was thirty as well as prestigious teaching positions, including at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris, and becoming a member of the prestigious the Académie de Beaux Arts—Lanvin remained relatively unknown to the art-loving public. 

What to make of such an artist, a man whose sculptures, whether statues, medallions, or stelae, demonstrate a rare sensibility – one that exalts movement, or an extra dimension away from the most apparent forms?  He was a quiet man who much preferred the work itself, rather than the all-too-necessary promotion that accompanied it. It is telling that he spent over a decade restoring public monuments throughout France. He did so out of a duty to preserve what came before him, but also to look differently at the world and the work within it. 

Born in 1923, Lanvin came of age during the Second World War. He completed his education during its early years and enlisted in the French army in 1944, earning the Croix de la Guerre for his service in 1945.   Lanvin memorialized the significance of what was at stake in the war in sculptural form soon after the armistice, le Monument des Déportés, followed by a statue of Saint Bernard that he completed in collaboration with Jacques Yencesse.  

The path to success and recognition seemed clear, yet it was his 1950 meeting with Marianne Greenwood, the Swedish photographer who chronicled Picasso’s life in Antibes, that stirred up Lanvin’s artistic and emotional passion. Marianne was his model, yes, but also his intimate, intellectually, artistically, and romantically. By nature, she was a free and original spirit, yet Gérard captured the peaceful balance within.  Marianne the adventurer needed to move about the world.  Gérard, the quiet artist, needed to move his hands around paper and plaster. Indeed, as his beloved mistress Marianne travelled, his sculpture took on dynamic elements, capturing movement rather than simply form.

In 1956, Lanvin had his first solo exhibition at the Musée Grimaldi d'Antibes, as well as other shows at the Salon de la jeune sculpture, at the Salon de Mai, and at several group shows at Jacques Massol and Galerie Claude Bernard. 

Lanvin married Christiane in 1958 and had four daughters. Profound sadness struck Lanvin in 1969. He lost his wife and then, Emmanuelle, the youngest of his daughters. The depth of loss and emotion was absorbed quietly, into Lanvin’s work. 

From 1959 to 1973, Lanvin focused much of his energy on the restoration of decorative and sculptural elements of historic monuments in Paris and other parts of France.  There is an inherent anonymity – an invisibility – to this work, suggesting that Lanvin saw it as a way to acknowledge elements of our world that we pay little mind to, but that, in fact, fill us with aesthetic and spiritual nourishment. His efforts on monuments like the Panthéon, the Paris Opera, the Assemblée Nationale, the Palais du Luxembourg, and the Cour Carrée in the Louvre, among others, have certainly nourished more than one soul.  

Still, Lanvin continued to work in his own studio, creating art, as well as elements of art for other pieces, found or sculpted by his own hands in his preferred draft material, plaster. A theme of Lanvin’s work was inspiration from found objects – wood, metal of various shapes to create a piece; he was not necessarily certain about the end goal when he discovered a piece, but knew that it would be useful to a future composition. His atelier was full of work that, individually, showed his mastery of materials, movement, and form, but eventually, these works become elements of a larger assemblage. The sculpture La forêt was the result of found and formed objects starting from a tree branch in 1960 that, enrobed and worked in plaster, took the form of a walking man. In 1995, the discovered root from a fallen tree inspired Lanvin to complete his earlier work.  Complementary in form to the previous piece, it was molded again in plaster and combined with the earlier work.  The whole, which was then cast in bronze, evoked the organic, magical whimsy of a forest dancer, connecting vegetal, mineral, and human worlds in sculpture, thirty-five years after first inspiration.  

The consummate sculptor, Gérard Lanvin found other areas to explore, notably in the numerous medals he composed for l'Hôtel de Monnaies et Médailles between 1970 and 1980. For Lanvin, medals offered a unique opportunity, that of creating a double illusion, that of relief, and that of twos spaces, the obverse and the reverse, that are never seen together, but constitute a whole with a common message. 

Lanvin’s skills as a sculptor, his insatiable curiosity and drive to explore materials and form, and his patient generosity that inspired generations of students mark him as one of France’s most earnest and dedicated artists of his generation. Lanvin died in June 2018. His studio on rue Saint Gothard, remains filled with his spirit, overflowing with work, some completed, some ready to be cast, some still bearing the potential of something wondrous to come.

Atelier

Works