Isabelle Waldberg

Isabelle Waldberg (1911-1990), born Margaretha Farner, begins her artistic training in Zürich with the Swiss sculptor Hans Jacob Meyer. But she suffocates in her native country and the revelation of the work of Alberto Giacometti causes her a feeling of revolt.
Based in Paris thanks to a scholarship, the young woman meets the writer Patrick Waldberg whom she takes the name, and soon turns away from figuration. It is a period of great intellectual excitement, she becomes friend with Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan, follows the ethnology courses of Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet. In 1942, she leaves Europe for New York where she attends the surrealists in exile - André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, but also Max Ernst, Roberto Matta or Robert Lebel. Freed from all academicism, she creates ephemeral sculptures in beech before becoming interested in the work of metal.
Back in France in the aftermath of the war, Waldberg moves into the studio that Duchamp gave her rue Larrey, in the 5th arrondissement of the capital. She returns to plaster and bronze, in a register of more organic forms. Her graphic work of the 1960s and the 1970s carries this experience of sculptor: volumes and space are treated with a singular attention.

Submitted by Galerie OSP