French Naif Modernist Sculpture In Metal Brutalist Head of Woman Valerie Hadida

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Cast metal on a wood plinth base Signed in cast at side with illegible name or initials This is being … Read more Cast metal on a wood plinth base Signed in cast at side with illegible name or initials This is being sold as attributed to her as that is how we acquired it. Dimensions: including integral plinth base 15.5 X 7.75 X 7.25 inches. Valérie Hadida is a Contemporary French artist, sculptor, and painter, renowned for her sculptures that evoke women, feminine beauty, and the complexity of the human soul. Born in 1965, she grew up in a family environment sensitive to the visual arts, which led her early on to pursue a creative career. She studied at l’Ecole d’arts plastiques et publicité de la ville de Paris (EMSAT) , she furthered her training at the Marielle Polska studio workshop where she discovered her calling for form and pose inspired by the human body; this encounter was decisive for her artistic style and her grasp of figurative representation. Valerie Hadida’s artistic visions of lanky, elegant women with immaculately coiffed curly hair captured in moments of serene contemplation. Hadida primarily crafts her “petites bonnes femmes,” “little good women” as she calls them, out of bronze and clay, which lends these figures a weighty monumentality in contrast to their playful, delicate structures that at times resemble the spindly creations of Alberto Giacometti. Hadida has exhibited extensively in Paris and throughout France. Her universe belongs to the Modernist figurative movement, marked by a constant search for authenticity, emotion, and restraint. Valérie navigates between different eras and aesthetics. The human figures she sculpts—often in bronze or patinated terracotta—express journeys through the soul. Her works also reveal a sensitivity to artistic calling, where each silhouette embodies a vision of life and maturity, plunging the viewer into contemplation of subtle emotional variations. Valérie Hadida has received several awards, notably the Emsat Contemporary Sculpture Prize in 2018, and has been exhibited in prestigious French galleries and foundations (including the Paul Ricard Foundation, where she was invited for a residency in 2021). She also participates in artistic advertising projects to support the dissemination of visual art to the general public, confirming institutional and public recognition of her work. She has shown with an impressive roster of Art Contemporain including Camille Claudel, Sylvie Mangaud, Michael Speller, David Gerstein, Richard Orlinski, Antonio Segui, Tatyana Schremko, Rafael Cabrera, Helge Leiberg, Antonio Signorini, Walter Moroder and Marine De Soos. Hadida has also shown at the Galerie Ariel Jakob in Paris. Her work is available through various galleries, including Galry and In Arte Veritas as well as Momentum Gallery. Valérie Hadida’s inspiration stems primarily from an intimate quest: a journey through the soul of her models. By observing the psychological complexity of individuals—especially young women in transition—she captures fragility and inner strength: those states of the soul that reflect maturity in progress. The main themes driving her works are femininity, modernism,memory, metamorphosis, and the passage from childhood to adulthood. It is at the heart of this introspective “work” that she draws the most intense emotions to transcribe into her sculptures. In her studio, she alternates between preparatory drawing phases and modeling, exploring a variety of poses and representations to translate diverse emotional states—melancholy, reverie, contemplation. This bond with drawing is essential: it enables her to fix the initial stirrings, those moments of interior journey, before bringing the piece to fruition in three dimensions. The move to bronze follows, with a meticulous patina that gives life to the figures, as if the material itself is animated by sentiment. She also nourishes herself with varied influences: poetry and literature that guide her toward interior depths, music that gives rhythm to her gesture, and encounters (in particular with Marielle Polska) that foster innovative artistic paths. Valérie Hadida's world is thus shaped by these multiple inspirations, making her art contemporary, personal, and deeply universal. See less