Paul BELMONDO
1898 - 1982
Paul Belmondo was born in the Algiers suburbs into a modest family of Italian origin. Very young, he attended the workshop of a marble worker close to that of his father, a blacksmith.
Very quickly fascinated by these visits, he was introduced to sculpture with tools forged by his father. And from the age of 12 made his first sculpture directly carved into a pebble.
He studied architecture at the School of Fine Arts in Algiers, but never abandoned his passion.
He then arrives in Paris after having obtained a scholarship and integrates the courses of Jean Boucher. He settled with the sculptor George Halbout in a studio in the 14th arrondissement, Villa Corot.
His career truly began in this workshop and his meeting with the sculptor Charles Despiau who, while encouraging him to continue, became his master and his friend.
He becomes a master in the art of portraiture. These faces are treated in a classic and intimate way and often adorned with modern hairstyles. He also practices monumental sculpture, and he believes that, as in antiquity, his two arts are closely linked.
He will carry out several public state orders; Palais de Chaillot, Museum of Modern Art, Town Hall of the 20th century.
In 1941, at the request of his master Charles Despiau, he took part in a "cultural trip" to Germany organized by Arno Breker, official sculptor of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Other renowned artists accompany him: Charles Despiau, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, Paul Landowski, André Derain and many others.
At the end of the war, this trip, his supposed membership of the Collaboration group (artistic section) will have him condemned by the purification court and banned from sale and exhibition for one year.
Symbolic sentence not carried out because subsequently a competent committee established that he did not belong to the Collaboration Group and proved that he had taken advantage of his relations with Arno Breker to come to the aid of many artists who were victims of the Germans.
After the war, abstraction was in full light, but Paul Belmondo nevertheless remained attached to classical art. His technique remains the same but the form of his works evolves noticeably with simpler volumes and softer and smoother lines.
Paul Belmondo has always been outside fashions and currents, his personal classicism is timeless. He was one of the last great classical sculptors of the 20th century.
