Rare Man Head Target in Boiled Cardboard & Painted... Lot 943

Rare Man Head Target in Boiled Cardboard & Painted Plaster Camouflage Item Of any rarity can be unique survivor of these Men Targets / May Be Unic Copy of This Man Head Target Still Avaible circa 1915 Printed. Sculpture in Card Board & Plate Painted Head 20 x 20 high 104 T.B.E. A - some missing pieces & tears / quelques éclats, déchirures MILITARIA - DECEIVING THE ENEMY. THE INVENTION OF CAMOUFLAGE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR. MILITARY EYE TRAP OBJECT. RARE TEMPLATE OF HISTORY, among the rarest existing. A MAN'S HEAD IN BOILED CARDBOARD AND PAINTED PLASTER, and the workshops for research and creation of camouflage * were created in 1915: to make oneself invisible to the enemy in order to deceive him visually and avoid being killed. From 1914 onwards, the conscription was wide (age range from 20 to 48 years old...) and among those mobilized were a number of painters and theater decorators -and sometimes of great reputation- who were considered more productive to employ other than in direct combat by exploiting their spirit, their artistic and creative genius. This is how the French army became avant-garde and created camouflage and concealment; concealment on the man - strong of the failure of the garance - whose uniform was painted so that he would be confused with the environment, the plane whose fuselage was confused with the sky, the tarpaulins imitating the grass which hid troops and artillery, the false cows giving the impression of quiet meadows close to the formidable armed trenches, fake straw stacks or dead trees made of reinforced concrete that allowed to hide a lookout on high ground in order to spot the advance of enemy groups, to adjust the artillery, to locate the snipers and THIS SINGLE FAKE HEAD -without any doubt- that once fitted with a helmet, put at the end of a stake, looked like a soldier and allowed to give a sign of life when a trench had been evacuated and thus to delay its occupation by the enemy A false head that could be exposed without risk to a false observation tree opening in order to identify the firing position of the sniper opposite and "neutralize him... * Section of the French military camouflage, created on August 4, 1915 under the responsibility of the painter and decorator JEAN LOUIS FORAIN; the workshops of the opera's decorators directed by the illustrator Abel Truchet were requisitioned in the Buttes-Chaumont. This workshop will train 200 painters and sculptors who will be distributed in the various army corps. In 1918, the number reached 3000 officers and men.