Claude de SORIA

Claude de Soria (1926 – 2015) was schooled in Paris, until war came along, modifying the tranquil course of her life. After fleeing to the South, she sailed to Tunisia, to Sidi Bou Saïd, in 1943 where she graduated from high school before coming back to France.

Fond of art, André Lhote taught her how to draw at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, then did Fernand Léger (1950). After that, she discovered sculpture with Ossip Zadkine (1952). The following years, Claude de Soria read, went to one concert hall to another, to one museum to another and travelled to Spain and Italia. With a quite sensitive stroke of pencil, she recorded, as she did when she was a child, her sentiments on a sketchbook in which we can find instant drawing of Cordoba's Feria, Siena's Palio as well as sculptures, capital and painting details. She discovered Pisano and Michel-Angelo. Numerous silhouettes sketched on the spot scatter her sketchbook. Through the pages, we encounter Paul Paray, Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud. In 1953, Claude de Soria married and settled in province for 10 years. During this period, she worked clay.

Back in Paris, the artist inspired from more and more abstract models: fruits, flowers, artists whose works she enjoyed. Picasso at the Grand and Petit Palais (66), Degottex (67), Hantaï at the Galerie Fournier (68), Giacometti at the Tuilerie's Orangerie, Matisse (70) at the Grand Palais and the Burghers of Calais by Rodin. In 1972, the natural reliefs she discovered during a trip to Sahara sparked some sort of interior earthquake. A troubled period followed.

She definitely discovered her way when workers miraculously forgot a cement bag in her workshop's court in 1973. From this moment on, she understood how she could use this fickle, malleable, knead and easy to mix material. Through time, she multiplied experiences: she tested several doses, several cement powder qualities, sable, fibre, water, interior structures as well as moulds and supports – glass, rhodoïd, cloths, paper… – creating a variation of shapes – circles, squares, rectangles, spheres, cylinders – while letting fate intervene as much as needed. “I try, with my attitude of careful attentiveness, availability and floating attention to not miss the innovation of fate”. Qualified as such by the artist, fate would be more like a constant attention given to the material for a work which is a constant research and which is always ready to question. It is a two way itinerary, between the artist and her material, with no long-term goal except perhaps the aim to exhaust all possible ways but with at least the will to walk and explore, to enjoy the present landscape and wait feverishly and with enthusiasm the appearing at the next turning point of a new panorama to admire.