Quimper adds to its 20th-century collection

8/2/24 - Acquisitions - Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts - They are part of the section devoted to Max Jacob in the exhibition Fragments surréalistes, René Iché et les poètes currently on show at the Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper, a variant of the monographic exhibition first shown in Roubaix and soon in Albi. René Iché’s mask (ill. 1 and 2) and Max Jacob’s gouache (ill. 3) recently joined the Quimper museum’s 20th-century collection, the first acquired from the Mathieu Néouze gallery in Paris and the second donated by a Belgian collector. The collections already included two bronze medals bearing the effigy of Max Jacob by Iché, testimony to the friendship between the two artists.

1. René Iché (1897-1954)
Mask of Paul Éluard, 1929
Bronze - 30 x 18 x 16 cm
Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Photo: Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts

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The third work by René Iché to join Quimper, the Mask of Paul Éluard is emblematic of Iché’s privileged relationship with the writers who, in the first decades of the 20th century, gravitated around Max Jacob, a notable Quimper figure whose graphic and documentary collection the museum conserves as a reference [1]. As stated in an essay in the above-mentioned exhibition catalog, Iché had many poet friends throughout his life, foremost among them Joë Bousquet, a high-school classmate who developed a body of work associated with Surrealism, and Guillaume Apollinaire, who he met on leave in 1916 or 1917, became his mentor and intermediary with all the members of the avant-garde, from the great elders of the Surrealists, Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Reverdy and above all Max Jacob, to the Surrealists themselves, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon. All were favored models for portraits by the sculptor, who dedicated numerous busts, medals, masks, tombs and monuments to them. However close he may have been to the Surrealists, René Iché never joined the group, remaining an independent sculptor who never…