Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Dans Les Collections Du Centre Pompidou, Musée National D'art Moderne

Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Galerie d'art graphique, Paris, 24 June-14 September 2009

Exhibition. Orléans, Museum of Fine Arts. October 15th 2009 to January 17th 2010

Killed at the age of 23 during the First World War, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) had time to make a decisive contribution to the renewal of sculpture at the very beginning of the 20th century. A member of the Vorticist movement in London, where he spent his entire career, he remains unjustly unknown to the French public. The Centre Pompidou nevertheless holds an admirable collection of his sculptures and drawings, brought together thanks to the generosity of an English collector.

Published here for the first time in its entirety, this collection is representative of Gaudier-Brzeska's whole production, which, initially marked by the influence of Rodin, soon achieved an original synthesis between cubism and primitivism. Richly illustrated and with an important documentary apparatus, the present work constitutes the catalogue raisonné of the collection of the Musée national d'art moderne and the only monograph available in French on the artist.