JOSEPH CSAKY | TÊTE DE LIONNE

Commissioned directly from the artist by Jacques Doucet, Neuilly-sur-Seine, circa 1923

Private Collection

Private Collection, Paris, circa late 1980s

Christie’s Paris, November 23, 2015, lot 211

Waldemar George, Csaky, Paris, 1930, p. 27 (for the present lot illustrated)

S. Torday, "Csaky," Kroniek van Kunst en Kultuur, no. 9, 1959, p. 35 (for the present lot illustrated)

Donald Karshan, Csaky, exh. cat., Galerie Dépôt 15, Paris, 1973, p. 62, no. 29 (for the present lot illustrated)

Félix Marcilhac,

Joseph Csaky: Catalogue Raisonné des Sculptures, Paris, 2007, pp. 78, 331, no. 69 (for the present lot illustrated)

Jacques Doucet: Modernist Collector and Legendary Patron

In 1920s Paris, Jacques Doucet was known as one of the very first high fashion couturiers, as well as one of the most important art collectors and patrons of his time. He developed his family’s garment shop on rue de la Paix into a profitable maison de haute couture that allowed him to start an ambitious art collection comprising 18^th Century French art and later contemporary works of painting, sculpture and design. As an avid collector, his close collaborations with innovative creators paved the way for modern art collecting and inspired future fashion designers like Yves Saint-Laurent to curate their own collections.

Surrounded with sophisticated advisors like Henri-Pierre Roché and André Breton, Doucet built an impressive collection of paintings and sculptures by such masters as Edouard Manet, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Joan Miró and Francis Picabia. In 1924, he became the very first owner of Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), bought directly from the painter’s studio. Doucet also surrounded himself with young and talented decorative artists whose experimental work he closely followed and encouraged. Such multidisciplinary talents included Joseph Csaky, Marcel Coard and Gustave Miklos, who worked across various mediums under Doucet’s patronage.

Joseph Csaky, like many of the artists working with Doucet, was an émigré. He moved to Paris in 1909 after studying at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest. He was one of the first artists to apply the principles of Cubism to sculpture. When the war ended, he was signed by the gallery of Léonce Rosenberg, an art dealer who took a keen interest in Csaky’s work and saw him as one of the major sculptors of his time. Doucet most likely discovered his work there. In 1921, Doucet purchased a stone head of a woman, and then commissioned several works from Csaky from 1923 onwards. It was during this period that Csaky began to soften the geometric, nested shapes of his sculptures and shift towards gentler, purer lines. He went on to create site-specific commissions for Doucet, which include the majestic handrail to the staircase in his Neuilly apartment.

Doucet met Marcel Coard in 1913, a few years after meeting Csaky. This initial meeting promptly resulted in the commission of a window display for Doucet. Influenced at first by the African and Cubist tastes of his patron, Coard created unique objects, employing rare and precious materials like rosewood, ebony and mother-of-pearl. Coard’s work on Doucet’s studio in Neuilly gave him the opportunity to meet the great artists of the period, including Csaky and Pierre Legrain, who oversaw the creation and orchestration of Doucet’s collection. Csaky’s new perspective on Cubism and use of animals and totems intrigued Coard, who asked Csaky in 1925 to collaborate on the apartment of Jean Cocteau in Paris and their house in Tours.

It was not until the early 1920s that Doucet met Gustave Miklos. “He was fortunate to be noticed by Mr. Jacques Doucet, whose tremendous encouragement allowed him to find his way and the means to produce some of his finest works," wrote a commentator of the period in the magazine L’Illustration. The couturier soon began to commission numerous objects and sculptures from Miklos, and lent several of the thirty or so works displayed at the Miklos exhibition at La Renaissance gallery in 1928: two amethyst rock crystal lamps, one purple and one green, a black and white granite dish with two bronze animal handles, as well as the important Deux Bêtes Affrontées (offered at Sotheby’s Paris in 2017), and a unique Animal sculpture (lot 39). Doucet also prefaced the exhibition catalogue with a message of praise and of friendship: “My dear Miklos, I am happy to say how fondly I admire your talent. I was one of the first to savor the delights of your byzantine modernism. Your friend, Jacques Doucet".

Together, Csaky, Coard and Miklos constituted some of the most talented sculptors and designers working with Doucet whose styles drastically evolved and grew through his patronage, allowing them to experiment and create freely. The following two masterworks of modernist design (lots 17 and 18) provide a glimpse into Doucet’s art-filled residence and represent unique advancements in sculpture and furniture by Csaky and Coard.

Executed by Hungarian-born, Paris-based artist Joseph Csaky at the beginning of the 1920s, Tête de Lionne is a superlative work within the sculptor’s body of work. This abstract sculpture imbued with Cubist influences counts among the artist’s very first pieces in which man or woman are no longer the central figure. Only the work’s given title provides an indication of its figurative intent. The result is a masterful exercise in geometric construction, carefully sculpted with incised details and incredible attention given to proportion.

This work is all the more remarkable considering that it is one of the few surviving testaments to an important yet unrealized project commissioned by the couturier and arts patron, Jacques Doucet, for a house in the Parisian suburb of Marly. In preparation for this project the sculptor designed a small-scale maquette of Tête de Lionne in patinated bronze. Upon deaccessioning the bronze maquette in 1966, Csaky wrote to the buyer about the conception of the form and in doing so illuminated the history of the present Tête de Lionne executed in granite. In his letter he explained: “Jacques Doucet, the great couturier, had the idea around 1920 to have the architect Mallet-Stevens design a house for him. To decorate the building, he requested the help of two sculptors. Henri Laurens was going to decorate the exterior, and I was going to decorate the interior. I started with a small maquette of a motif intended for a pedestal on the building’s main staircase. The maquette represented a lioness. This is the piece you just acquired. This is the only object fully realized specifically for this building, which ultimately was never built. However construction was initiated. We were on the first floor when J. Doucet fell sick. His wife prevented him from completing the building. So we abandoned the construction. But since the maquette of my lioness greatly satisfied him, he commissioned a full-size version, which I executed in granite.” 

By Csaky’s own account, the present granite Tête de Lionne evolved from this initial commission and from Doucet’s continued patronage. Doucet most likely discovered Csaky’s work at the gallery of Léonce Rosenberg in Paris around 1923, which resulted in numerous commissions throughout the 1920s. Tête de Lionne is one of the earliest and most superb examples of a collaboration between the sculptor and fashion designer. Other important commissions include the design for the staircase of Doucet’s hôtel particulier in Neuilly, designed circa 1927. The residence was a tribute to modernist art and design and housed important works such as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, sculptures by Gustave Miklos, as well as unique furniture pieces by Pierre Legrain and Marcel Coard, including the unique Cubist armchair featured in this collection (lot 18).