The work of Robert Couturier (1905-2008) will have traversed the history of 20th-century sculpture with a measure and discretion reminiscent of its creator. A student of Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), from whom he inherited the rounded forms in some early works such as "Femme couchée" (Le bain de soleil) (1930) and "Le Vent" (1937), Robert Couturier managed to make his mark from the 1930s onwards in the history of French sculpture. He caught attention with pieces like "Jardinier" (1936, Esplanade du Trocadéro) and the oversized plaster mannequins, whose influence continues to inspire contemporary creation today, as seen in the very modern "Pavillon de l’Élégance" built by Émile Aillaud for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques.

Becoming one of the major figures in figurative sculpture after the war and in the 1950s, Robert Couturier opted for plaster as his preferred material. He appreciated its malleability and the possibility of incorporating found objects encountered during his travels, viewing sculpture as a form of DIY art, starting from almost nothing, from the ordinary ("L’Évêque," 1987; "Saint Sébastien," 1999).

"For me," he wrote in 1979, "I never have an idea except starting from an already existing form, a form often encountered by chance... a stone, a piece of wood washed up on a beach, a cardboard cylinder, a twisted piece of iron for example. I picked up this stone or scrap metal without clearly discerning what attracted me to them, and I look at them, I live with them, and gradually a human image is grafted onto these objects."

Robert Couturier conceived sculpture as an art of ellipsis, which is why he gave such importance to emptiness in the construction of his stretched, vertical sculptures, as demonstrated in most of his works: "Femme qui marche" (1947), "Jeune fille lamelliforme" (1950), "Femme dans un fauteuil" (1950), "Fillette au cerceau" (1952), "Le Guerrier" (1958), all of which contributed to defining his work at a moment in history when he shared this revival of figuration with his contemporaries and friends Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Germaine Richier (1902-1959).

I fondly recall these words he used to repeat during all those years when I visited him in his studio: "I don't like things that smell of sweat. In essence, sculpture bothers me in some ways." What irony! Robert Couturier was a man of wit, and it is this witty spirit that characterizes his seated women, his walking women ("Femme à la robe," "Femme à la jupe," 1995), which possess a timeless quality and speak of a certain joy of living.

The exhibition at the Dina Vierny gallery offers a journey through sixty years of creation, showcasing the consistencies and variations of this work that is all too often forgotten, all too often sidelined.

Today, at a time when these 1950s are being revisited, it is necessary to showcase Robert Couturier's sculpture and to remember that he was truly a man of his time, a friend of architect Émile Aillaud and sculptor Germaine Richier, photographed by Roger Parry and filmed in 1962 by Agnès Varda in her wonderful "Cléo de 5 à 7," a film in which Robert Couturier plays himself in his studio at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Valérie Da Costa