sans titre

Henri Presset (Geneva, 1928-2013)
Collection : Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain (FCAC)

Whether in sculpture or engraving, Henri Presset endeavored to describe the human figure, particularly the female silhouette. His career, which began in the 1950s, gave him opportunities for wide variations in form and style, but also in technique – concrete, plaster, weathering steel, or cast iron (his metal of choice). There were even major shifts, such as when he decided to renew his formal approach and adopt simple geometry in 1965. This new radicalism opened sculptural territory made of solids and voids, symmetry and circulations, and led him to a structured understanding of volumes. The railing he conceived for Collège Calvin enabled him to punctuate the sober, classical, functional design of the balusters with stylized characters, stripped down to their essentials. They are not just eye-catching, but also supports for pedestrians to lean on. Devoid of all superfluous detail, these abstract presences – around forty simplified female silhouettes – stand in silence, punctuating the staircase and articulating the urban space symmetrically and cleanly.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham