Alexandre NOLL (1890-1970)

Lot 115
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Estimation :
30000 - 50000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 92 160EUR
Alexandre NOLL (1890-1970)
The Other, 1961 Sculpture in ebony from Gabon Signed " ANoll ". H : 24,5 cm Bibliography: - "Alexandre Noll sculpteur", for a similar model reproduced on page 7 - Olivier Jean-Elie and Pierre Passebon, Editions du Regard, Paris, 1999, for a similar model reproduced on page 91 Provenance : Alexandre Noll workshop Exhibitions : - Galerie du Passage, exhibition dedicated to Alexandre Noll in 1999 in Paris - Alexandre Noll, Wunderkind.Art Gmbh & Co KG, Charlottenburg Castle, Berlin, June 30-August 27, 2000 ALEXANDRE NOLL How does he make his creations? I don't think we should expect too much from him in terms of traditional processes. The workshop where he works with his daughters is in some ways similar to that of the tablemaker and the woodcarver. The same tools are used to achieve the same ends. Noll roughs out the pieces with a saw, then he hollows them out, carves them, refines them with a gouge. He uses the sandpaper and the buffer to polish them. Alexandre Noll multiplies the effects by letting the bark appear here, while polishing a surface elsewhere. The form? It has no lesser part in his research. The unusual rhythms, the unforeseen and surprising harmonies that he likes, where does the inspiration come from? One can hardly doubt that he does not take into account, at least in part, the very particularities of the material he uses. The cut of the wood, its accidents, a knot, a wound, the movement of the veins certainly influence his decision. It is difficult to deny the role of chance in such works. It is up to the artist to make his profile. But one is also forced to admit a first idea, at the origin of the composition. It obviously exists in Noll. In the darkness of his naive subconscious an image. It becomes clear in the light of his mind. And it is then that, the preceding proposal being turned over, he chooses, with its particularities, its defects, its accidents, the piece of wood which will enable him to carry out this image. Now, Noll's smells, even practically usable, only ever remotely remind one of the manufactured objects by their forms. Asymmetrical, irregular in their thickness and in their surface, they rather remind of natural phenomena. Not that they imitate nature. They suggest it, they summarize it, they synthesize it. This is undoubtedly Noll's deepest intention and this is what makes his creations so attractive. In addition to the plastic qualities that often arouse the touch as well as the sight, there is in them a power of evocation. In our city interiors, they bring a bit of the mysterious life of trees, like a call to the forest. René Chavance (Art et Décoration, June 1938) "I do not kill the wood, I obey it. Following meekly its contours, its knots, the slightest accidents of its veins, I draw a work inspired by nature itself..." Alexandre Noll
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