Description
Biography :
After high school, he spent three years in evening classes with Robert WLERICK, who later became his teacher at the School of Applied Arts before moving on to the Fine Arts, where he stayed briefly, preferring the instruction of ZWOBADA and WLERICK in their workshop. However, in 1941, the arrest of Jews led this Protestant to join the Resistance in the F2 network. Deported and sentenced to death, he was saved by the advance of Russian troops.
The difficult years began for the young artist. But in 1954, the Villa Abd el Tif Prize pulled him out of financial troubles for two years.
Upon his return from Algiers, he became a nude drawing professor at the Fine Arts of Clermont-Ferrand and then was appointed through a national competition to the directorship of the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg, from which he resigned in 1989.
Since then, there have been a series of exhibitions, in New York, in the United States where he represented France at the IMF in Washington, and then at Harvard. The cities of Brest, Angers, St-Amand-Montrond, Cognac, Nevers paid tribute to him with major retrospectives.
The Palais d’Iéna received his large bronzes on deposit. The museums of Modern Art in Paris, Albi, St-Amand-Montrond, Bourges, Strasbourg, Lausanne, Krakow, Budapest, exhibit his works.
He sculpted the great Jean MOULIN at the request of Jean MONNIER for Angers and a François MITTERRAND commissioned by Pierre MAUROIS for Lille. Co-opted by the Taylor Foundation in Paris, he is a member of its committee. Among other works, he has several large sculptures in Trélazé, Sainte Gemmes, and Avrillé.
Numerous books are dedicated to his work. The most important is the one Henri MERCILLON wrote at the request of François DAULTE at the Bibliothèque des Arts in Paris in 1997. The most recent ones are those Claude POUNEAU released at Editions PGR in Angers on Cacheux’s pastels and drawings in 1999.
In July 2001, the city of Angers inaugurated an outdoor sculpture museum at the Arboretum. The orangery, which will contain bronze sketches, drawings, and pastels, will be open to the public in 2003. The works located there become part of the heritage of the museums of the city of Angers.
Upon his return from deportation, he received the Legion of Honor, the National Merit, the War Cross with Palm, the Cross of Volunteer Combatants of the Resistance, the Gold Medal of the French Renaissance, etc. On June 25, 1998, he was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor.
The cities of Brest, Angers several times, St. Amand twice, pay tribute to him through exhibitions.
Comments :
“He is a sculptor in every sense of this magnificent word. He undoubtedly carried in him, from childhood, a sense of masses, an intuition for the balance of grand volumes that are the prerogative of authentic sculptors. If I had to try to define the best sources of his talent, I would say that it stems from a taste for the monumental, a rare quality above all, but one that never degenerates into grandiloquence. In essence, it is an instinctive wisdom ennobled by intelligent boldness, and this formula would suffice to define the Mediterranean spirit to whom we owe the most beautiful sculptures in the world.”
Jean Brune, Algiers, April 1956
Literature :
Henri Mercillon, François Cacheux ou La passion de la vie, Lausanne, La Bibliothèque des arts, 1997.
Digital Literature :
www.francoiscacheux.fr : A similar copy is reproduced on page 2/4
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