Description
It is one of the most important piece of Marguerite Lavrillier-Cossaceanu’s work. It seems that the plaster model of this bust was exhibited at the 1946 Salon d’Automne (no. 812), and again at the 1962 Salon d’Automne (no. 414).
The bronze proof acquired in 1955 (AMS 390), kept by the museum of modern art of the city of Paris, was melted by Susse in 1949.
It was presented at the Salon d’Automne in 1949 (n ° 851) and during the exhibition organized by the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in 1952. Finally, the work appeared on the occasion of the Human Forms Biennial which was held at the Rodin museum in 1968.
“Her science and her great spontaneous gifts place her at the forefront among the young modern statuary” writes Antoine Bourdelle in 1928, about that which was his student at the Academy of the Grande Chaumière from 1922 with Germaine Richier and Alberto Giacometti, then his collaborator until his death in 1929.
At the same time, she became the student and the collaborator of his compatriot living in Paris, Constantin Brancusi. The young woman, born in Bucharest to a French teacher mother and an engineer father, has already made a name for herself in the fine arts of her hometown, in the studio of symbolist sculptor Dimitrie Paciuera (1873- 1932) then in Rome. It is in the Eternal City that she meets the one who will become her husband, André Lavrillier (1885-1958), First Grand Prix of Rome in 1914. Greeted by commissions and exhibitions, the work of Marguerite Lavrillier-Cossaceanu is present with around thirty works in public collections in France (museums of the Navy, Orsay, La Monnaie, Cité de la Musique…) and abroad.