XAVIER EECKHOUT

A specialist in animal sculpture from 1880 to 1950, Xavier Eeckhout presents works by the great masters of the early 20th century, including Pompon, Bugatti and Sandoz, as well as Artus, Le Bourgeois, Lémar, Petersen, Guyot and Godchaux, for whom he has written the catalogue raisonné.

In his gallery in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he regularly inaugurates thematic exhibitions, alongside the international fairs in which he has participated for over ten years.

Galerie Xavier Eeckhout is continuing its project to highlight women animal sculptors of the 1930s, by presenting at FAB this llama by Anne-Marie Profillet, an artist who is as little known and recognised today as she was at the 1940 Salon, one year after her death:

“It was the work of a young dead woman, still almost unknown, unsuspected by the general public, esteemed only by a small group of artists and comrades. Not since the untimely death of her friend Jane Poupelet had sculpture suffered a more regrettable loss.” in Louis Gillet, A.M. Profillet – Sculpteur – 1898-1939, 1973, p. 4.

Profillet was very close to François Pompon and Jane Poupelet, with whom she exhibited as part of the Groupe des XII. The plaster model of this llama was exhibited for the first time in 1930 at the Exposition des Artistes Animaliers at the Brandt gallery, and the bronze was presented the following year. This may be our model, as it comes from the collection of the artist’s sister, Jeanne.