Georges Jeanclos

View Georges Jeanclos’ works featured on Ceramics Now Magazine

The passionate and powerful figurative sculpture of the late Georges Jeanclos evokes emotion through a mastery of materials. Anguished and full of pathos, the works have an immediate and provocative poignancy. Their faces and postures show an extraordinary sense of tragic human experience; yet retain a tender beauty by the deft use of the sculptor’s chosen medium, a thin gray terra cotta.

Georges Jeanclos once said that the largest influences on his work were World War II, his apprenticeship to a sculptor, and his discovery of Etruscan art. There were tragedies in the artist’s biography that also had effect on the work. Central among those was his experience of hiding with his Jewish family during the Nazi occupation. During 1943, when he was 10 years old, his family fled the village where they had been hiding and lived in the forest near Vichy for a year to escape the Gestapo.

Jeanclos was often quoted regarding the use of the medium; for him the undecorated gray terra cotta was ideal for expressing the fragility of life. The thin clay shrouds the body and often carries fragments of words from the Psalms, the Song of Songs, or the Kaddish.

Born in Paris in 1933, Georges Jeanclos apprenticed to a sculptor at the age of thirteen. Following his studies at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts, Jeanclos won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1959. He continued his study with Balthus at the Villa Medicis in Rome from 1959 through 1964. In a professional career over thirty years long, Jeanclos produced a body of work in ceramics and in bronze, gaining considerable recognition in France.

Georges Jeanclos – View his works

EDUCATION
1952 – 1959 – École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
1959 – 1964 – Villa Medici, studied with Balthus

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Centre Culturel de l’Yonne, Auxterre
Fonds National d’Art Contemporain
Foudation du Judaïsme français, Paris
F.R.A.C. Alsace-Lorraine
F.R.A.C. Champagne-Ardennes
F.R.A.C. Normandie
Institut du Monde Arabe
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Jewish Museum, New York
Johnson Foundation, USA
Musée Cantini, Marseille
Musée d’Art Juif, Paris
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée de Cambrai
Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans
Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels
Poitou-Charentes
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2002 – Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
2001 – Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
1999 – Musée de l’Hospice Cometess, Lille
1999 – Rétrospective Georges Jeanclos
1999 – Musée Daubigny, Auvers-sur-Oise
1999 – Galerie Capazza, Nançay
1996 – Musée Labenche, Brive-la-Gaillarde
1996 – Terres Cuites
1996 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris La fontaine Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
1996 – LARC, Scène Nationale, Le Cruesot
1995 – Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
1995 – Galerie Capazza, Nancay
1993 – Centre Culturel de Boulogne-Billancourt
1993 – Musée de Tessé, Le Mans
1990 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris Le Tympan de Saint-Ayoul
1990 – Galerie Patrice Trigano, FIAC, Paris
1989 – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Saintes
1989 – Le Prieuré d’Airaines (Somme)
1988 – Herzliya Museum of Art, Israël
1988 – Musée de Cambrai
1988 – Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
1988 – Musée d’Arad, Israël
1987 – Galerie Woljen/Udell, Edmonton
1987 – Galerie Woltjen/Udell, Vancouver
1987 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1987 – Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1986 – Galerie Mira Godard, Toronto
1986 – Maison de la culture, La Rochelle, Le tympan de Saint-Ayoul
1985 – Centre culturel de l’Yonne
1985 – Galerie Claude Bernard, New York
1984 – Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1984 – Maison de la culture, Orléans
1984 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1983 – Musée National d’Art Moderne, Troyes
1983 – Galerie Seoul, Korea
1983 – Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1983 – Maison de la Culture, Orléans
1983 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1982 – Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium
1981 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1981 – Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1981 – Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1980 – Galerie Albert Loeb, F.I.A.C., Paris
1980 – Galerie Jade, Colmar
1980 – Forum Gallery, New York
1979 – Galerie Albert Loeb, Paris
1979 – Biennale Prize, Budapest
1978 – C.A.C., Pontoise
1978 – Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1977 – Galerie La Touriale, Marseille
1977 – Galerie Noella Gest, FIAC, Paris
1977 – Galerie Lacloche, Paris
1977 – Ateliers d’aujourd’hui, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
1977 – Galerie Lanzenberg, Brussels
1977 – Botrop Museum, Botrop, Germany
1977 – Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
1975 – Galerie Shandar, Paris
1974 – Galerie Shandar, Paris
1973 – Maison de la Culture, Vichy
1967 – Galerie 9, Paris
1966 – Oslo
1966 – Cologne
1964 – 1965 – Galerie 9, Paris
1960 – 1961 – Galerie Jardin des Arts, Rome