Focus | Simone Boisecq

3 - 6 April 2025

On the occasion of Art Paris, the gallery continues its work of rediscovering artists who actively contributed to the development of post-war abstraction with a dedicated Focus space on Simone Boisecq (1922–2012). A French sculptor born in Algiers, her practice revolves around elemental forms drawn from both reality and primitive arts, moving away from both naturalistic figuration and geometric abstraction.

The selection of works comes from the artist’s so-called “sauvage” (wild) period, her first phase of sculptural creation, which spanned from 1946 to 1960. Over these fourteen years, Simone Boisecq developed a distinctive style with a symbolic vocabulary imbued with spirituality and poetry, featuring forms inspired by nature.

View of Simone Boisecq's “wild objects” at the Unterlinden Museum, Colmar - Photo DNA - Laurent Habersetzer

“I spent my youth in Algeria, in a climate where succulents and tropical plants assert their volumes in intense light. And that is undoubtedly the source of inspiration for my first sculptures, or rather my first ‘objects’—wild objects exhibited in Paris in 1952.”

Simone Boisecq

Born in Algiers, Simone Boisecq arrived in Paris in 1945 and soon met the sculptor Karl-Jean Longuet, whom she would marry a few years later. She discovered his practice and, in 1948, left Agence France-Presse, where she was working, to join his studio.

She quickly became acquainted with Picasso, Brancusi, and Zadkine, as well as artists of the Nouvelle École de Paris, including Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes, Bissière, Étienne Martin, and Stahly. She held her first exhibition at the M.A.I. gallery in 1952, and was later noticed by Germaine Richier in 1954 during her show at the Jeanne Bucher gallery, while she took part in numerous group exhibitions alongside the leading figures of post-war Paris.

Simone Boisecq in her studio, 1986 © Archives Boisecq

Objet sauvage, 1950

Objets sauvages, 1948

Simone Boisecq quickly developed her own style, favouring modelling over the direct carving practised by her husband. Her stripped-down, elemental forms seem to emerge “from some distant and primitive civilisation (…), as if ‘coming from nowhere.’” In her work, curves and serrated contours engage in a constant dialogue, reflecting her passionate and independent spirit.

From 1949 to 1955, references to the world of plant life dominated the early phase of her artistic journey. In her Objects and Wild Flowers series, exhibited in 1952, thorny, ridged, or crenellated forms flourish at the crossroads of the rhythms of agaves and prickly pear trees—plants she had lived among for over twenty years in Algiers. “What I have created was born there,” she confided.

“A large vase with raised arms could evoke a hollow human form in an offering posture—an orant. I never directly tackled the human figure; at the time, I felt that plant forms carried a sharper symbolic meaning.”
Simone Boisecq

Totem, 1957

Through her rejection of imitation, narration, and anecdote, and by infusing her Idols with an anthropomorphic dimension, the atmosphere of her work immediately resonates with that of the Arts Premiers, a connection further echoed in her totemic figures. For the artist, it is a matter of approaching the essence of form, recalling Brancusi and his pure-shaped sculptures, which she discovered in 1946.

Simone Boisecq’s works stand out for their “spiritual and essential interpretation of chosen subjects,” as critic Herta Wescher observed. Her volumes embody a simplicity, austerity, and timeless quality that reflect her relationship with the sacred—an influence instilled by her father, a mystic of Breton origin.

Over the years, this interest became more pronounced, leading her to create cross-shaped structures reminiscent of the Breton calvaries she had glimpsed during her holidays in Morbihan. These would prefigure a new series of more architectural works.

Homme cactus, 1956

“I want to remain true to the original impulses.”
Simone Boisecq

Detail | La forêt, 1955

La forêt, 1955

About the artist

Simone Boisecq was born in Algiers into a bourgeois family, with a poet father and a mother who was a piano teacher. Passionate about literature and philosophy, as well as the Arts Premiers, she began her artistic career in the late 1940s when she arrived in Paris. Her sculptures, inspired by nature and blending vegetal and anthropomorphic forms, evoke primitive objects or imaginary artifacts, questioning the relationship of her subjects to the sacred. A figure of post-war abstract sculpture, her work has been exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Galerie Denise René, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée Rodin, as well as at the Biennale de Paris and FIAC.

Focus | Simone Boisecq

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“I spent my youth in Algeria, in a climate where succulents and tropical plants assert their volumes in intense light. And that is undoubtedly the source of inspiration for my first sculptures, or rather my first ‘objects’—wild objects exhibited in Paris in 1952.”

About the artist

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