1886-1948
Theme/Style – Art Deco, Realism, human figure, mythological figures and animals
Media – Bronze, glass, ivory, ceramic, and metal sculpture
Artistic Focus – Although Marcel André Bouraine’s classical bronze figures are his best known, he also created chryselephantine (bronze and ivory) statuettes and ceramic pieces. He also often used the pseudonyms “Marcel André Derenne” and “Briand” for his non-bronze metal pieces.
Career Highlights –
- Marcel André Bouraine was born in Pontoise, France in 1886. Largely self-taught, Bouraine was briefly a pupil of sculptor Alexandre Falguière, who emphasized realism in 19th-century sculpture.
- Bouraine was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War I and was interned in Switzerland. His talent interested the German soldiers, and while in Switzerland he produced several monuments, including one for the city of Lausanne. He later studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and executed the tomb for deceased interned French soldiers there in 1920.
- During the 1920s Bouraine exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Tuileries (1922), the Salon d’Automne, the Salon des Indépendants, and the Société des Artistes Français.
- Bouraine also designed smaller sculptures for several French foundries including Susse Frères, Edmond Etling, and Arthur Goldscheider; and he often exhibited with the artist groups La Stèle, which was primarily modern sculpture, and L’Evolution, which was focused on decorative arts.
- Bouraine participated in the sculpture category of the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.
- In 1928 the sculptor and glass artist Gabriel Argy-Rousseau commissioned a number of figurines from Bouraine, including female nudes, a fountain and an illuminated group in colored, translucent pâte de verre glass.
- During the 1920s and 1930s Bouraine created some of the most quintessential Art Deco sculptures of the period, including “Amazone” and his series of “Diana” and “Danseuse” figures.
- Bouraine was also a lifelong friend of sculptors Max Le Verrier and Pierre le Faguays, two of his fellow students in Geneva, and the Le Verrier foundry produced many of Bouraine’s statues.
- In 1935 the city of Paris purchased a terra cotta bust from Bouraine, and in 1937 Bouraine executed two major commissions for Paris’s Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, including a large sculpture for the Palace of the Ceramics of Sèvres.
- During World War II Bouraine’s production slowed. While living in Biot in the French Alps, he sculpted pipe heads sold under the brand name “OPTIM.” Marcel André Bouraine passed away in France in 1948.
Selection of Works by this Artist
Amazone
Bibliographic references are available upon request.