Charles Auffret (1929-2001) - Lot 233

Charles Auffret (1929-2001) Woman at the toilet 1964 Patinated terracotta Signed and numbered 6/8 35 x 24 x 15 cm La Femme à la toilette marks the beginning of Charles Auffret's career. He enters Femme à la toilette in the Prix Godard competition. The aim of the prize was to promote a young sculptor of great talent and promise, and it rewarded the winner with a bronze cast of the winning sculpture. The bronze was produced by the Émile Godard foundry, which sponsored the operation and lent its name to the prize. On the evening of February 4, 1964, Charles Auffret received the prize for La Femme à la toilette. According to the journalist from L'intransigeant, the work is "both traditional and daring". It already displays all the hallmarks of his style: an "impressionist" sculpture with a very tender view of women. Bibliography: Charles Auffret (1929-2001), Sculptures-dessins, exhibition catalog Voiron, Musée Mainssieux, March 30 - September 8 2002, Voiron, Musée Mainssieux 2002, NP, repr. (bronze print). Charles Auffret, exhibition catalog Rome, villa Médicis, May 9 - July 15 2007, Paris, Somogy, 2007, p. 41, repr. (bronze print). Charles Auffret (1929-2001). Sculpteur et dessinateur, exhibition catalog Mont-de-Marsan, musée Despiau-Wlérick, August 10 - September 16 2012, Mont-de-Marsan, L'Atelier des Brisants, 2012, p. 18, repr. (bronze print). After immersing himself in Burgundian sculpture while studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, Charles Auffret joined the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1947. There, he studied with Alfred Jeanniot and Marcel Gimond. In 1958, he set up his studio in the Buttes-Chaumont district and discovered the work of Charles Despiau, Robert Wlérick and Charles Malfray. In 1964, he was awarded the Prix du Groupe des Neuf. Following in the footsteps of the Schnegg Gang half a century earlier, the Groupe des Neuf was formed in 1963. Jean Carton, Raymond Martin, Marcel Damboise, Paul Cornet, Raymond Corbin, Léon Indenbaum, Léopold Kretz, Gunnar Nilsson and Jean Osouf, heirs to Wlérick, Despiau, Malfray and Gimond, united around a common conception of sculpture, reaffirming their direct affiliation with so-called "independent" sculpture. The following year, winner of the Paul Ricard Foundation's International Sculpture Prize, Charles Auffret was invited to take up residence on the Ile de Bendor with his sculptor wife Arlette Ginioux. There, he erected a monumental sculpture known as L'Éveil, one of his major works.