POLLES
September 17, 2013 - 6-9pm

Born in 1944, Paris, France Lives and works in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, Italy.

His love of women, the sensuality, the complexity, the shapes and passions, brought him to create the female form. From the beginning he created a singularly stylized cubist form, which has become his signature. All are cast in bronze by Pollès himself and made in a series of four with one artist's proof. His master of the patina is considered unparalleled. The world's recognition of his craft is evidenced by the many awards he has won, the unique places he has shown and the prestigious private collections he is in, including that of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Pollès was recently honored in an exhibition outside Paris, sponsored by the French Government, called 'Sculptors From Rodin to The Present'. He was one of the few living sculptors to be so honored; the others include Abakanowicz, Arman, Saint-Phalle & Wesselmann. Morris Rheims, a respected Art Critic, and a member of The French Academy, has said 'I consider Pollès to be one of the outstanding sculptors of our time.' His show in the Bagatelle Gardens in Paris in 1998 was a major honor as he was one of only two artists who have ever been allowed to present their work in the Bagatelle. The other artist is Henry Moore.

Pollès power of giving life to the bronze by infusing it with a carnal quality enables him to combine the breath of sensuality with the glowing work of the metal-smith. In my mind this moulder of metal has taken his place among the illustrious initiates, a curious man, who handles the immensely heavy bronze with the elegant ease of one plucking down a feather from the swan s breast, shaping, sculpting and burnishing it into a blend of substances and fantasies.

Maurice RHEIMS of the Académie Française

One day, walking along the sidewalk, I found myself halted, aggressed and challenged by a bronze figure in a window... The sense of aggression could just have faded away, but instead, it dragged on. Unconsciously magnetized, magnetized by my unconscious, I went back next day. That was how; I finally entered the Pollès’s universe, rather like someone going to a psychoanalyst for the first time.

Régis Debray, Frenchintellectual, journalist, government official and professor.

You have to have been him, a golden curled Vulcan in the workshop reverberating with the roar of futuristic machinery, from the casting, an event as moving as a mountain dawn, to the interminable stages of the polishing. But what could be less 'mechanical' than the work of our Pollès! What could be even fleshlier, vital, succulent, or more inspired by the wild sap of life.

Jean Lacouture,French journalist, historian and author.

What is he trying to express? He does not invent Woman, he revels her through the imposition of his own vision, creating curves or angles according to the whim or the violence of his desire. He envisioned her through his heart and body. He fashioned her now as female, now as female, intoxicated by her curses.

Jacques Laurent, Member of the Académie Française.