POLLÈS

For nearly sixty years, Pollès has pursued an artistic exploration whose apparent unity conceals an extraordinary diversity. Bodies emerge from matter, coil around an invisible axis, unfold into voluptuous curves before breaking into unexpected angles. The human figure always remains perceptible, yet is subjected to a freedom of transformation that carries it to the very threshold of abstraction. His work has been described as organic Cubism, an apt expression for this paradoxical encounter between geometric rigor and sensual abundance, between the architecture of volumes and the energy of living forms. Yet it would be reductive to regard these sculptures merely as a sensual celebration of the female body. Their singularity lies precisely in their ability to transcend their subject. Pollès’s women are not observed models, but invented presences. They evoke, by turns, archaic Venuses, the fullness of Maillol, the distilled purity of Brancusi, or the formal audacity of Picasso, without ever being confined to any particular lineage. There is something immemorial about them, as though the artist were rediscovering, through the language of modernity, a primal intuition of sculpture: the ability to draw from matter a form capable of moving us before we have even attempted to understand it. François Nourissier, a member of the Académie Goncourt, recognized in this work an art in which sensuality merges with harmony, where the apparent perfection of volumes allows an inner fire to shine through. Jean Lacouture, for his part, saw in the encounter between Maillol and Brancusi one of the keys to Pollès’s universe, while emphasizing what made him irreducible to his illustrious predecessors: his refusal to separate the invention of form from its physical realization.