Béa, 2024

Roland Masson  

Whether they are rare marbles, precious woods or bronzes, Roland Masson works, with elegance and originality, on the theme of the couple and the eternal feminine. A true stylist of the silhouette, the artist emphasizes the balance of volumes, reaching perfection. The seductive curves of her bodies testify to a call to sensuality.

And now you just have to observe his meticulously polished pieces that intertwine, voluptuous with softness, to be taken by a tactile desire that it is impossible to resist. The magic happens ...

Roland Masson, graduate in economics and sociology, was no longer content to teach. This is how he enrolled in the fine arts of Poitiers in 1975, to be immediately seduced by the physical relationship with the material .

From then on, he no longer lets go of the scissors, quickly stripping a page of his life, to devote himself exclusively to sculpture.

It was a long time ago, at a time when his sculptures were becoming more figurative. Consequently, Masson will not cease to purify his characters, considering that "the form, it is the substance which rises to the surface".

Without further confidences, arguing, “that the pages of explanations are useless", as a true stylist of the silhouette, he seeks on paper the balance of volumes, relentlessly drawing his models, to flirt with perfection. It is enough to observe these meticulously polished pieces which intertwine, voluptuous with softness, to be taken by a tactile desire which it is difficult to resist.

This desire to touch, to caress the material, certainly results from the same pleasure as that of their creator, who concedes to maintain a real carnal relationship with his pieces that he never tires of polishing.

This purity, this sensual side, is exacerbated by the torsion of these bodies, by the arrangement of the masses, which flow in a freedom of seductive pose.

The street light on the smallest protuberance to ricochet with its bursts of fire on the curves and counter-curves, multiplying the effects of colors and rhythm of its pieces, which celebrate with their stripping the symbolic and universal reality of the form. "

Thierry sznytka

"The charm of curves ...

Beauty, sensuality of mother goddesses, Roland Masson's sculptures are works of plenitude. Silhouettes with accomplished curves, they encourage contemplation and caress. Because the marble from which they come gives them an eternal elegance. For Roland Masson, marble is not cold; it is a warm, soft and noble material ... Black from Belgium, gray from Italy, white from Carrara draw it in astonishing spirals. He lets himself be guided by the block of marble when he can choose it, inspired by its form, "manipulated" by it, sometimes disarmed, often triumphant. He watches, takes pleasure in this complicit dialogue, the difficulties encountered push him even further in the adventure: a vein, a sparkle, a fault transforms his project, but does not cut into his passion… ", - Brigitte Des Isles, "Arts News Magazine"

"The eternal feminine, Roland Masson

With this sculptor, it is the search for pure forms, the sumptuousness of the curves, the elegance of the line, in a marriage of gestures and material which reveals the contained sensuality of the model. Black Belgian marble, white Carrara, precious wood, bronze, the support plays its role through an identifiable texture. But the important thing remains in the creative capacity of this artist who, in a complex relationship with femininity, diverts the figuration to retain only evocative forms. It is a eulogy of tenderness and beauty, of pleasures and desires, which interprets the plastic character of the woman, preferring to forget the plausibility to restore a posture, a movement. The excess of volumes and curves underlines the anatomical grace, in a constant search for perfection which encourages to embrace with a caress the blooming of this purification. Especially since the material, polished like a piece of goldsmith's work, seems predisposed to play with the reflections of light which bounce off these curves, until they vanish between two protuberances. From then on the charms her discover voluptuous of contemporaneity, sovereign of the exaggeration of their roundness or their slenderness. Observer of women, Roland Masson robs nature of the original forms, which he restores by exacerbating the torsion and languor of the bodies, to encourage the contemplative power until flirting with the eternal and timeless values of feminine beauty " . Thierry sznytka

Collector Info

Most of the sculpture by contemporary artists is made in bronze. This noble material has shown that it overcomes the tests of bad weather and centuries.

A bronze is an Original Work of Art when it is produced in a maximum number of 12 copies. Among these originals, four, called “Artist Proofs", are numbered EA I / IV, EA II / IV, EA III / IV, EA IV / IV in Roman numerals, the 8 others are numbered 1/8, 2 / 8 etc… in Arabic numerals.

The cast iron necessary for the construction of the mold and the molding operations are very expensive and could not be amortized on a single work. Once the 12 copies have been removed from the mold, the mold is destroyed.

Bronze can take on different shades called patinas, obtained from chemical reactions of oxidation by the founder or the artist himself.