Robert Muller (1920-2003) - Grand portrait - Composition - projet de sculpture

Title: Grand portrait, sculpture project
Ref: 19

Technique: green felt-tip on thick paper
Period: 1960s/1970s

Sheet format: 77.4 x 57.8 cm

Unsigned
Provenance: artist's studio

Good condition, some stains (see photos)

Robert Müller, born in Zurich in 1920, is a renowned Swiss sculptor, a pioneer of iron sculpture in the 1950s and 1960s.

During World War II and the immediate post-war period, he trained in the studios of Otto Bänninger and Germaine Richier, two major figures of sculpture based in Switzerland. Richier’s influence, with her hybrid forms blending human, animal and nature, profoundly marked his beginnings.

In 1947, Müller spent two years in Genoa, where he sought to free himself from Richier’s influence by exploring figurative sculptures in plaster and bronze. In 1949, he settled with his family first in Paris, then in Villiers-le-Bel, where he lived and worked until his death in 2003.

From the mid-1950s, Robert Müller enjoyed the highest recognition and international reputation. He was nicknamed the "Iron Müller". Along with Swiss sculptors Bernhard Luginbühl and Jean Tinguely, he is considered one of the founders of modern iron sculpture.

His Parisian works, often abstract but with references to the human body, are characterized by an erotic and organic tension, reminiscent of armor shells or dismembered insects.

Müller exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennale and the Paris Biennale between 1956 and 1960, and participated in documenta II in Cassel in 1959.

His works have been acquired by prestigious museums, notably in the United States, and exhibited in galleries such as Jeanne Bucher’s.

Retrospectives of his drawings and engravings took place in 1979 at the Musée Rath, which houses two important iron sculptures (Le Bûcher 1959 and L’Archange 1963) and around a dozen drawings from 1972 to 1977. In 1982 and 1996, the Prints Cabinet of the same museum offered two exhibitions, each accompanied by a published catalogue raisonné of the work, prepared by Rainer Michael Mason.

Despite significant fame in the 1950s–1970s, he progressively withdrew from the art scene from the mid-1970s. He died on 15 October 2003 in Villiers-le-Bel, at 83, leaving an artistic legacy celebrated in Europe, notably through posthumous exhibitions such as that at Galerie Schifferli in 2020, marking the centenary of his birth.