HENRI PROZINSKI (1887-1968) (HENRI LOUIS BOLESTAS PROSZYNSKI - Lot 197

HENRI PROZINSKI (1887-1968) (HENRI LOUIS BOLESTAS PROSZYNSKI, DIT) SCULPTOR & SUSSE FRÈRES FOUNDER-PUBLISHER "Pekingese", proof number 2, from an edition of 4 proofs, all made in 1935. Sculpture. Bronze proof with nuanced brown patina. Lost-wax casting. Early edition, 1935. Signed PROZINSKI and bearing the foundry stamps SUSSE Fes Edts Paris (inscribed and circular), the mention Cire perdue and the Bronze stamp and a number 2 on the base. Height: 19 cm - Length: 46 cm - Width: 30 cm Henri Louis Bolestas PROSZYNSKI (1887-1968) A French sculptor born in Pau in 1887, Henri Proszynski remains famous for the many monuments he built throughout his life as an artist. The son of a Ponts et Chaussées engineer who installed most of the railroad lines in Ariège and acquired the Château de Crampagna, he came to Paris to study sculpture, but his heart and inspiration remained Occitan. "Whereas so many young sculptors and painters are bewildered by the big city and ask it for all their subjects, [it was] our peasants and our peasant women that Proszynski strove to translate," wrote his friend Roger Lafagette, former deputy for Ariège, in an article published in the newspaper L'Avenir in September 19201. It's hardly surprising, then, that after the Great War, having been a poilu mobilized on the firing line, he received several official commissions for war memorials in Ariège towns such as Foix, Pamiers, Lavelanet and Le Fossa. A regular at art fairs, he exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1906, and from 1908 onwards presented his work at the Salon des Artistes Français. He won numerous prizes and medals, and was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1934. But it was in 1925 that he designed one of his masterpieces for the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, set in the Cours-la-Reine gardens, a fountain depicting a reclining faun facing a ram. This monumental work demonstrates that Henri Proszynski is not only a sculptor committed to representing the human figure, but also an animal sculptor, and has been for many years. As early as 1914, he presented a plaster group of playing dogs at the Salon des Artistes Français. Then, in the 1930s, he repeatedly exhibited animal subjects at Galerie Le Journal, including cats, goats, hawks, toads and more. The cat is a recurrent motif in his work - studied in a variety of attitudes; but so are dogs, notably with the Pekingese shown here, which we don't know whether it was commissioned or chosen by the artist. An adept of direct carving, Proszynski's sculptures are simplified in form, in the vein of the Art Deco plastic approach, sometimes even tending towards a certain geometrisation. But this geometrisation in no way precluded his attachment to retranslating emotion and feeling in his sculptures, as is the case with Printemps (also entitled Fontaine du Berger), another of his masterpieces, which truly depicts love - whether human or animal. The same is true of our Pekingese, which, though stylized, symbolizes first and foremost man's faithful companion. _____ 1 Roger Lafagette - Propos de Vacances, Un grand artiste in L'Avenir, le Journal de l'Ariège - 45e année, n° 3920 du jeudi-dimanche 2-5 septembre 1920.