Sorel Etrog - Dessins et sculptures

The Musée Granet, on the upper mezzanine of the chapel of the Pénitents blancs-Granet XXe, an exhibition prepared in partnership with the Jean and Suzanne Planque Foundation as part of the deposit of its collections with the Aix institution.

Under the title Sorel Etrog, drawings and sculptures, 40 works by the Canadian artist (1933-2014) have been brought together for the occasion, including donations made by him in memory of Jean Planque. Sorel Etrog is indeed the last "coup de coeur" of the collector who unfortunately could not meet the sculptor during his lifetime. But the latter, having learned of the Swiss artist's wish to acquire one of his works, decided a few years later to offer several important works, sculptures and drawings, to his Foundation. Although they were not chosen by the collector himself, these works fit in well with the ensemble assembled by Jean Planque. They meet the essential criteria that guided him in his choices: rigor of language, inner truth and invention.

The exhibition is divided into two parts: the first part is devoted to the impressive group of drawings that resulted from the artist's encounter with a series of engravings by Goya, and then with Picasso's great painting, Guernica. These frantically drawn compositions in charcoal recall the drama experienced by the artist as a child during the massacres perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jewish community in his hometown, Iaşi, Romania. The second part of the exhibition illustrates the possible resilience of such a heartbreak with the evocation of more peaceful themes such as that of dancers and acrobats, as well as an astonishing interpretation of a painting by Cézanne, Five Bathers. To the tragedy of his childhood, Etrog tried all his life to respond by inventing a formal motif, the link, a metaphor for all conflicts and separations as well as their necessary resolution. But this motif also translates the obsession with balance that is naturally inscribed in the approach of every sculptor.

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