IMAGE DETAILS

Galerie Nicolas Bourriaud

Marcelle Delcour-Guinard (Switzerland, Meyrin 1896-1978 France)
Bather, 1931
Marble sculpture
H 172 x W 45.5 x D 46 cm
Signed ‘M Delcour-Guinard’ and dated 1931
Unique piece
Provenance: the artist's family collection
Exhibition: Salon des Artistes Français, 1932, Baigneuse, statue de marbre, n° 3675

Born in Cointrain (Canton of Geneva), Marcelle Delcour trained at the Regional School of Fine Arts in Rennes and studied under the sculptors Laurent Marqueste (1848–1920) and Victor Ségoffin (1867–1925), the head of the sculpture studio for female students at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. In 1920, she married the painter Robert Raoul André Guinard (1896–1989), with whom she spent two years in Morocco in 1934. Upon returning to France in 1936, the couple settled in a small village called Crécey, in the commune of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer: he painted, she sculpted. Benefiting from the post–Second World War reconstruction projects, she received numerous commissions from Canon Pinel to restore works of art preserved in the churches of the Manche region.

Anne Delcour-Guinard exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1924 to 1932. In 1924, the committee of the Association des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, architectes, graveurs et dessinateurs (Fondation Taylor) awarded her the Prix Galimard-Jaubert on May 27. In 1925, she received an honourable mention, and in 1932, a bronze medal for La Baigneuse, a marble sculpture. The work was then displayed in a place of honour at the centre of the nave of the Grand Palais.

The sculpture is indeed remarkable for its life-size proportions and its distinctive 1930s style, which, in the spirit of Art Deco, celebrates the female form - elongated, elegant, and liberated. She is embodied here as the garçonne: short-haired, athletic, and modern, asserting her nudity without false modesty, revealed through the graceful gesture of her folded arm and offered to the viewer’s gaze.