Émile Gilioli

Émile Gilioli ( born June 10, 1911 in Paris, France, † January 19, 1977 ) was a French sculptor and designer of Italian descent. He is one of the most important sculptors of abstract art after the Second World War and was one of the most important representatives of the Lyric abstraction in French sculpture.

Life and work

Émile Gilioli was born to an Italian family in Paris in 1911, but spent his childhood in Italy. From 1928 on, he worked as an apprentice to a blacksmith and adopted parallel part in evening classes at the School of Decorative Arts in Nice. In 1931 he received a scholarship and began studying at the École nationale supérieure des beaux -arts de Paris. He worked in 1937 in the decoration of a pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 with. Émile Gilioli had his first solo exhibition in 1941 in Grenoble.

In the 1940s, he created the church sculptures and monumental memorials for memorials, mainly in the department of Isère, in the Rhône -Alpes. These include the monument in Voreppe of 1945, the monument of the deportees in Isère in 1949 and the monument of the martyr in Vercors from the year 1951.

In 1945 he moved permanently to Paris and presented as part of the group of the Galerie Denise René in the salons of Realité Nouvelle. He was a founding member of the Salon de jeune Sculpture and Vice President, headed by André Bloc group. In 1958 he exhibited at the Galerie Louis Carré. He received in 1957 the large sculptures price the town of Carrara and 1958, the price for the tapestry of São Paulo Biennial in 1958. In 1959 he received the Grand Prize for the Arts of Paris and took part in documenta 2 in Kassel in the Department of Plastic. He took in 1974 successfully participated in the competition for the design of the memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld.

Three important aspects characterize his artistic work: the Mediterranean character of his art, the personal conception of an organic sculpture and the aim of realizing a habitable sculpture. The latter he realized in 1973 with his most important work: the National Monument of resistance ( Monument National de la Résistance, inaugurated by André Malraux ) on the plateau of Gliere, which had fallen to the March 26, 1944 in the local battle - Resistance fighter recalls.