René Iché (21 January 1897 – 23 December 1954) was a 20th-century French

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Life and work

René Iché was born in Sallèles-d'Aude,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. He fought in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, where he was injured and gassed. After the war, he earned a degree in

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

, but also studied

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

with

Antoine Bourdelle Antoine Bourdelle (; 30 October 1861 – 1 October 1929), born Émile Antoine Bordelles, was an influential and prolific French sculptor and teacher. He was a student of Auguste Rodin, a teacher of Giacometti and Henri Matisse, and an important ...

and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

with Auguste Perret. In 1927, his pacific monument of Ouveillan (a Monumental Modern church in the South of France) was well received. During his first solo exhibition, at the art dealer Léopold Zborowski in 1931, two sculptures were acquired by the

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

(now in the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

) and the

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

.*Robert Maillard, ''Dictionary of Modern Sculpture'', 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141.*Michel Seuphor, ''The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture''. 1959. Zwemmer. Page 282. Pereetfils

In 1928, he married his model Rosa Achard, known as Renée. His daughter

Laurence Laurence is in modern use as an English masculine and a French feminine given name. The modern English masculine name is a variant of Lawrence and originates from a French form of the Latin ''Laurentius'', a name meaning "man from Laurentum" ...

, who later became a writer, was a model for some of his work. Iché was a very good friend of

Max Jacob Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic. Life and career After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic c ...

, close to

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...

Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

Jacques Lipchitz Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Lithuanian-born French-American Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, domi ...

, Zadkine and a childhood friend of Joë Bousquet. He sculpted the faces of

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

and

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...

. In his studio of

Montparnasse Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split betwee ...

, in 1937, he executed a '' Guernica'' sculpture on the day (27 April 1937) of the announcement of this event on the radio station. Upon completing the work he did not wish to exhibit it. He was amongst the 200 pioneers of the

French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

– he was in the

Groupe du musée de l'Homme The ''Groupe du musée de l'Homme'' (French language, French for 'Group of the Museum of Man') was a movement in the French resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II, German occupation during the Second World War. In July ...

– during the summer of 1940 and participated at the Degenerate art exhibitions. He sculpted so ''La Déchirée'' (''The Torn''), which was brought to London and given to General

Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...

, became one of the symbols of the French Resistance. He participated at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 1948 with ''Le Couple'' ( Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) and received the ''Grand Prix de Sculpture'' in 1953 for ''Melpomène 36''. His work was also part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the

1948 Summer Olympics The 1948 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and officially branded as London 1948, were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus cau ...

. He was chosen to sculpt ''the

Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early ...

Monument'' in ParisPeter Read, Picasso and Apollinaire. Ed. University Presses Of California, Columbia And Princeton (United States), April 2008. and an ''

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

' Memorial'' in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, but both projects were interrupted by his premature death in Paris. Iché's work is close to

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and like the sculptors

Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker, who was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced ...

and Germaine Richier inherits an aesthetic born from the workshop of Antoine Bourdelle.

Film

Jean-Pierre Melville Jean-Pierre Grumbach (20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973), known professionally as Jean-Pierre Melville (), was a French filmmaker. Considered a spiritual godfather of the French New Wave, he was one of the first fully-independent French filmmake ...

's film '' Army of Shadows'' (''L'Armée des ombres'', 1969) is based, like the novel of Joseph Kessel, on the Resistance network to which Iché belonged, Cohors-Asturies. The character of Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse) is inspired by Iché.

References

*''Bibliographic Guide to Art and Architecture'', 1978. G.K. Hall. Page 488. *Jane Clapp, ''Sculpture Index''. 1970. Scarecrow Press. x pages. Page 459. *Robert Maillard, ''Dictionary of Modern Sculpture'', 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141. *Michel Seuphor, ''The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture''. 1959. Zwemmer. 372 pages. Page 282. *Julian Park, ''The culture of France in our time''. 1954. Cornell University Press. 345 pages. Page 87 *Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, ''Index of Artists, International-biographical Including Painters, Sculptors ...'' 1935. R.R. Bowker Co. 493 pages. . Page 136.

External links

Official WebsiteFrench TV show (english subtitles), ''Guernica'' by René Ichéartist pagePompidou Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iche, Rene 1897 births 1954 deaths French modern sculptors French surrealist artists Recipients of the Croix de Guerre (France) Recipients of the Legion of Honour Sculptors from Paris French military personnel of World War I French Resistance members School of Paris 20th-century French sculptors French male sculptors Art competitors at the 1948 Summer Olympics

Life and work

Film

See also

References

External links