Man with a pirogue - Arthur Dupagne (1895-1961 )

Bronze with a dark brown patina
cast by BATARDY
raised on a green marble base

France
circa 1930
height of the bronze 53 cm
total height 58 cm
length of the base 52,5 cm

Biography :
Arthur Dupagne, born in Liège in 1895 and dead in Brussels in 1961, was a Belgian sculptor. He was a pupil of Georges Petit and Oscar Berchmans at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Liège. A stay in the Belgian Congo from 1927 to 1935, where he was attached as an engineer to the exploitation of the diamond fields of Kasaï, brought him into contact with the sculpture of the Tchokwe ethnic group which attracted him, while he was struck by the vigorous beauty of the natives. This discovery inspired him with monumental sculptures which earned him numerous commissions, one for the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1937 and another for the International Exhibition in New York in 1939. Arthur Dupagne exhibited "Le Couple Bantou" at the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of Brussels in 1958, which was then considered as one of his masterpieces.