Hernri Mercillon, « Charles Auffret, un monde sans paroles », Sculpture figurative au XXe siècle in. Commentaire, hiver 1994-1995, vol.17, n°68, p.985

Nothing destined Charles Auffret (born in 1929) to take up the art of sculpture. He has often commented that in the world of his childhood, people did not go to museums; they lived simply and symbiotically with their rural surroundings. From this rural milieu, he gained hardihood, good common sense, and simplicity. Despite his family’s reservations, he enrolled in the École des beaux-arts in Dijon, where he learned modeling, stone-cutting, and molding. It was in Paris that he discovered the work of Malfray and then that of Despiau and developed ties with Raymond-Martin. In 1955, he met Jean Carton, for whom he retained a life-long admiration.

Charles Auffret[1] prefers themes that emphasize calm and serenity. A pregnant woman offered to pose for him; he accepted and worked, as he put it, “with enthusiasm.” Through that work, he depicted all expectant mothers, with the heavy silhouette, the weight of the child, and the hand which, in a single gesture, supports and caresses. He managed to invest it with a sense of the monumental through a play of light across the gestating body. Auffret is fascinated by forms and their structures; he loves their fullness to the point of opacity. He takes the world as he finds it: women in moments of their daily lives (Toilette, 1967-68), or in their varied states of being, and children in their simplicity and natural grace (Jean-Baptiste). More recently, he took up a sketch, extensively reworked it, and came up with The Embrace, a poignant testimony to tenderness and shared love.

In 1991, Richard Peduzzi, recently named the head of the École des arts décoratifs in Paris, asked Auffret, then a professor at the École des beaux-arts in Reims, to teach a drawing course. It’s important to note that Peduzzi, one of the key figures of this turn of the century, a renowned scenographer, furniture designer, and theater decorator, celebrated Auffret for his new “modernity,” that of a “return to craft.”

A study of this branch of French sculpture cannot close without touching on the graphic work of these artists.

Sculptors are great sensualists. They need to visualize what they’re going to model in clay or carve in stone. They deal with the lives of beings because their art excludes landscapes and elegies. More than any other type of artist, they contemplate, interrogate, and scrutinize the human body. They know that this body is divided into large planes and distinct masses, that it’s composed of volumes with proportions and a true architecture.[2]

For decades, in pencil, red chalk, ink wash, and sometimes pastel, the creators evoked here have celebrated the human body; with a few lines and some shading, they have made the forms of their models, whether calm or tormented, leap to life before us with a handling of space that is the particular reserve of sculptors. True connoisseurs of drawing are never mistaken in this.

In presenting this brief analysis of the work of these seven sculptors, we wanted to draw the reader’s attention to an art that is too often ignored by our compatriots. The Orsay Museum has already reminded us that in the 19th century, sculpture was, above all, French. Alongside their “modernity,” this phalanx of artists has continued a tradition whose continuity our country should affirm. Some of them have gained a distinct celebrity, and their statues and busts are featured in numerous museums and major collections. But why this Parisian exclusion?[3] Why do Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, and the United States have such a great interest—and this is well documented—in this sculpture? Perhaps their more independent taste is less swayed by the ever-changing currents of fashion, and their preference for the open air and their desire to ornament their public gardens, parks, and universities with strong symbols often leads them to prefer the human form to other modes of representation. Why are the French indifferent?

In a text for an anthology, Jacques Thuillier stated it thus: “Sculpture is a severe art. Music grips and infuses the listener, imposing internal rhythms that charm and exalt. Absent and artificial, painting immediately suggests a whole world, even imaginary ones, with all the simplifications possible. Sculpture acts by its presence and could be said to speak silently to the spirit, such that few can hear it.”