Lot 314 D

What is exceptional about this sculpture otherwise typical of Oscar Jespers's work is its materiality. The sculptor conceived this head in different materials: plaster, white marble, ceramic and, as in this case, artificial stone. His contemporaries rarely dealt with this broad palette of materials in one and the same sculpture. Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who had already passed away in 1919, was an exception and he experimented with various materials - not only to bring out the aesthetic of the different surfaces, but also to explore the question of the thematic link between material and form.
With this portrait-like head the sculptor has also enthusiastically joined together the decorative Art Nouveau of his epoch with his anthropological knowledge in different materials. Since Picasso's discovery of masks for fine art and his first use of them in the 1907 painting “Demoiselles d'Avignon”, they had become an iconographic topos which constantly occupied the subsequent avant-garde. Much like Picasso, Jespers also used the structures of exotic mask as a point of orientation: they underlie the finely drawn face, which he also frames within the luxuriantly and energetically full, semi-abstract form of the hair. Standing out on a slender neck, the sculptor has provided the female head with an aristocratic grace. The “stone”, with its slightly rough surface and yellow tint, underscores the archaic association sought by the artist.