French Bronze Console Table Attributed to Jacques-Pierre Dufresne, 1950s

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A rare French bronze console table attributed to Jacques-Pierre Dufresne, dating to the 1950s. Cast in bronze and finished in … Read more A rare French bronze console table attributed to Jacques-Pierre Dufresne, dating to the 1950s. Cast in bronze and finished in verdigris patina, the rectilinear frame is shaped by a triangular support that lends the profile both balance and rhythm.

Anchoring the base, a reclining nude stretches across the span—her body distilled to essential planes and curves, at once silhouette and structure. Sculpture here is the architecture itself, holding aloft the thick glass top.

About Jacques-Pierre Dufresne
Born into an artistic lineage, Dufresne (1922- 2014) grew up in the studio of his father, the painter Charles Dufresne, surrounded by the language of form and gesture. His own path unfolded amid the restless energy of postwar France—a moment when sculpture was rethinking itself, searching for new vocabularies between the classical and the abstract.

Shaped by his friendship with neighbor Henri Laurens, Dufresne absorbed the discipline of structure and proportion while embracing the radical freedom of post-cubism. A member of the artist collective Échelle and a regular exhibitor at the Salon des Tuileries and Salon de Mai, he became part of a generation intent on reconciling the tactile with the conceptual—the body with the void.

This bronze console is a rare and intimate expression of that pursuit: sculpture crossing into the world of design. Its verdigris patina carries the quiet authority of something unearthed, a fragment of lost antiquity, while the glass top places it firmly in the modernist idiom of postwar France. It is more than furniture—it is a dialogue between eras, between hand and idea.

A piece that feels at once ancient and avant-garde, reminding us of the mid-century moment when sculpture dared to step into everyday life. See less