FRANÇOIS STAHLY
1911-2006
Venus Hottentote (large version), 1941 – 1974
Bronze with slightly corroded black patina, posthumous casting of a bronze series begun in 1974, bears the sculptor’s signature and the stamp of the founder TEP 4/8, 100 x 55 x 50 cm.
The theme of the primitive Venus with ample forms fascinated Stahly, who did several versions of it at the outset of his career. This piece is an enlargement in bronze done by the sculptor and differs in certain details from the wooden Vénus Hottentote sculpted in 1941/42. It was named by the writer Henri-Pierre Roché, Stahly’s first collector and patron.
Roché was a larger-than-life figure, the author of Jules et Jim and a close friend of Marcel Duchamp.
In the 1910s he introduced the artists of the Parisian avant-garde to the United States, including Brancusi, of whose works he was an impassioned collector.
Bibliography
– François Stahly, « François Stahly », La Connaissance Bruxelles, 1975, ill. 16
– François Stahly, Hartmann édition, Paris, 1997, p.84