Visionaries. Carte blanche for Prune Nourry

At the artist's request, three art historians spent a year conducting research to compile the writings and photographic portraits of eighteen female sculptors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them are Käthe Kollwitz, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Hélène Bertaux, Jane Poupelet, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Selma Hortense Burke, Daria Gamsaragan, and Sarah Bernhardt. Inspired by the artistic quality of their work and the strength of their commitment, Prune Nourry has sculpted the portraits of these eighteen "visionary" women. In doing so, Prune Nourry makes the role of women as creators visible.

The exhibition is spread throughout the Petit Palais collections, from the museum's outdoor esplanade to the garden.

On the forecourt, Mothership, a hybrid figure between a pregnant woman and the hull of a rusted metal boat, introduces the exhibition. From the sculpture gallery to the North Pavilion, the eighteen new portraits created for the Petit Palais revive the memory of sculptors from the past. Prune Nourry extends the path by placing about twenty of her previous works, from the Holy Daughters to the Venuses, in dialogue with the permanent collections.

Like a treasure hunt, visitors set out to discover white marble eyes with black pupils embedded in Prune Nourry's plaster busts as well as in the pedestals of the Petit Palais' works, creating a visual dialogue between the two. These stone eyes, inspired by the polychrome statuary of the Petit Palais, invite a cross-look at the different eras present in the museum, from antiquity to the present day.

The artist chooses plaster as her main material, echoing the museum's collection, where nearly 70% of the sculptures are "studio plasters." These casts were not intended for museums, yet they have survived through time where the bronze versions were destroyed. Prune Nourry also plays with scale: her new busts range from 70 cm to 3.50 m in height, while her earlier works range from 20 cm to 27 m in length, making the exhibition a space where the female body unfolds in all its dimensions.

In the art world, women have long been confined to roles as models or muses, reduced to bodies scrutinized by a male gaze. Their disappearance from institutional narratives, and from sculpture in particular, is not due to an absence of work but to a structural erasure. Hindered by social norms and limited access to training, they had to establish themselves in a field dominated by male figures. The Petit Palais collection bears traces of this: omnipresent as subjects, model bodies, idealized, and allegorized, women remain largely absent as creators. Of all the works in the collection, barely 4% were made by female artists, with only 4 sculptors represented. The exhibition is an opportunity to highlight their works alongside their portraits.

The female sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries thus constitute a pioneering generation. Visionaries, they lead the way. Yet, despite the rise of photography, their faces remain difficult to visualize. Prune Nourry is part of this living genealogy. She extends the legacy of these sculptors by restoring their visibility and affirms, both through her practice and her approach to transmission, her commitment to the recognition of women in the history of sculpture.