ARMAN 1928/2005, Bronze, Spiral violin

ARMAN 1928/2005, Bronze, Spiral violin
Work sold with certificate

Bronze with very beautiful patina, in excellent condition, No. 91 / 100,
Signed and numbered in the bronze, black marble base

Subject and title: "Spiral violin"

Dimensions: height: 73 cm, width: 22 cm, depth: 20 cm

Height of the base: 8 cm and diameter: 8 cm

Biography:
ARMAN 1928 / 2005
Arman or Armand Fernandez, born November 17, 1928 in Nice and died October 22, 2005 in New York, is a French artist, painter, sculptor and visual artist, known for his "accumulations".
He was one of the first to use manufactured objects directly as pictorial material, which represented for him the natural and multiple extensions of the human hand that undergo a continuous cycle of production, consumption, destruction.
The only son of Antonio Fernandez, a furniture and antiques dealer, of Spanish origin who had lived in Algeria, and Marguerite Jacquet, from a family of farmers in the Loire, the young Armand showed an early inclination for drawing and painting.
After his baccalaureate, he studied at the École des arts décoratifs in Nice (now the Villa Arson), then at the École du Louvre. He met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal at the judo school they attended in Nice in 1947. He hired Elena Palumbo Mosca as an au pair to look after his children. With these two friends, he became interested for a time in Eastern philosophies and Rosicrucian theory.
At the end of 1957, Armand, who signed his works with his first name in homage to Van Gogh, decided to abandon the "d" of Armand and made his artist signature official in 1958, on the occasion of an exhibition at Iris Clert.
In October 1960, he held the exhibition "Le Plein" where he filled Iris Clert's gallery with discarded objects and the contents of selected trash cans. This exhibition was the counterpoint to the exhibition "Le Vide" organized two years earlier at the same gallery by his friend Yves Klein.
Also in the same month, under the leadership of art critic Pierre Restany, Arman became, with Yves Klein, one of the founding members of the group of the New Realists (proclaimed by Restany: "new perceptive approaches to reality"), alongside François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé, joined later by César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Gerard Deschamps and, in 1963, Christo.
  From 1961, Arman developed his career in New York, where he lived and worked half of his time, alternating with his life in Nice until 1967, then in Vence until his death. In New York, he first stayed at the Chelsea Hotel until 1970, then in a loft in the SoHo district and, from 1985, in his building in TriBeCa.
At the end of 1989, Arman received the Legion of Honor from President François Mitterrand.
Three years after his death in New York, part of his ashes were brought back to Paris in 2008 to be buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (division 11, a few meters from Frédéric Chopin)
Throughout his life, Arman was also a passionate collector of everyday objects (watches, weapons, pens, etc.) and art objects, particularly traditional African art, of which he was a connoisseur, a valued and recognized specialist.
To create the work Les Revolvers, he used the etching technique.
In 1960, he used plexiglass for the first time.
He is represented by the Templon gallery in Paris and Brussels.

The work:
Arman was interested in the status of the object and the relationship that modern societies have with it, between sacralization and overconsumption-destruction. His works can be classified into different categories.
His "accumulations" of objects following a quantitative logic that erases their singularity reflect an image of profusion, at the same time as they underline the perishable nature of the products of the affluent society.
In the logical continuation of the accumulations, he began in 1959 the series of "Pubelles": he exhibited household waste, rubbish found in the street and waste.

Destruction of objects:
In 1961, he began the series of "Colères": destruction of objects (the "Cups" of violin, piano - like Chopin's Waterloo -, double bass...) glued back on pedestals or wall supports. In "Combustions" (1963), these same objects are burned.

Public commissions:
Arman has invested the public spaces of nearly a hundred cities around the world by carrying out public commissions in the form of monumental works.
1971: Accumulation musicale, a concrete and iron structure, Parco Sempione, Milan5.
1976: Divisionis Mechanica Fossilia6, an accumulation of cogs and metal parts set in concrete, installed at the University of Burgundy in Dijon.
1982: Long Term Parking on the site of the former Fondation Cartier in Jouy-en-Josas, a 19.50 m tower made up of real automobiles stacked on top of each other.

Ref: NZSY56UJKH