Jean FAUTRIER (Paris 1898- Chatenay Malabry 1... Lot n° 72

Standing nude, 1926 Graphite drawing and stump 40 x 25 cm on view Signed lower left Fautrier Bibliography: Yves Peyré catalog, page 326, full-page reproduction For Fautrier, women are a central subject, whether realistic or suggested, and an inexhaustible source of inspiration in his work. With these nudes of women, we place ourselves between 1923 and 1926, when the artist was being cared for in hospital by Mademoiselle Berthe Léonie Pierson, a nurse, following her gassing in 1918 during the First World War. At the time, Fautrier was already going against the grain of his contemporaries. "I refused to join any school, cubist or otherwise. I felt that cubism was a finished thing, and surrealism, which was fashionable at the time, was also a finished thing, I would even say a finished thing in advance." In perpetual opposition and search for a new artistic expression, he drew astonishingly realistic figures and scribbled silhouettes with a rapid pencil stroke that we recognize immediately.