PRESENTATION: Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda’s films, photographs, and installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary with a distinct experimental style. The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Nathalie Obadia Archive

Agnès Varda often remarked that she had three lives, one as a photographer, one as a filmmaker and one as a visual artist. Most of the photographs in the exhibition  “Calder, Richier, Schlegel, Székely par Agnès Varda” are shown for the first time, since their discovery by Rosalie Varda, the artist’s daughter, in the archives of the historic residence at 86, rue Daguerre in Paris. Agnès Varda’s photographic oeuvre is still relatively unknown, despite it being her first artistic activity. After obtaining a Certificate of Professional Competence in photography through evening classes, she began working for the Théâtre National Populaire, under the direction of Jean Vilar. In 1954, she presented her first exhibition in the courtyard of her home-studio on rue Daguerre, inviting her friends. This exhibition presents both period prints made in Agnès Varda’s darkroom as well as posthumous silver prints. It reveals the great interest and friendship with which Agnès Varda photographed her artist friends: Alexander Calder, Germaine Richier, Valentine Schlegel and the couple Vera and Pierre Székely. In these photographs he depicts both the artists and their work. We find Valentine Schlegel, her lifelong friend, nicknamed “Linou”, kneading her clay in an almost cinematographic sequence of shots, or standing in her studio (which was located on rue Daguerre for a time). Agnès Varda has her posing amidst her bulbous ceramics, and captures her vases filled with foliage and flowers, sometimes cleverly arranged on a table like a still life from another era. The photographs echo the works; large period prints reveal the voluptuous curves of Valentine Schlegel’s sculptures, which evoke both bodies and moving vegetation. Agnès Varda’s eye captures the face of Alexander Calder, handling his mobiles. She liked to photograph her American friend with his thunderous laughter, at the beach, where he poses humorously while waving his arms, or in the street, next to one of his works. On Agnès Varda’s contact sheets, we see Alexander Calder interacting with his Circus (1926-1931), concentrating on his acrobats suspended from wires in mid-performance, and the dozens of minute elements that make up this installation, which he continued to activate throughout his life. In the early 1950s, Agnès Varda moved to rue Daguerre, where she found a thriving artistic community. She also came to visit Germaine Richier in her studio. The impact of her photographs is all the more poignant since the sculptor disappeared shortly after the photographs were taken, in 1959. We see Germaine Richier absorbed in her creative work, surrounded by her long sculptures with their tormented forms. Agnès Varda’s suggestions for poses can be sensed, we see the sculptor’s face appear behind a window or her hand covering the sculpture of a Cuttlefish. The Hungarian artist couple Vera and Pierre Székely settled in Paris in 1946 and moved to Marcoussis in 1955. It is to this town in the Essonne that Agnès Varda, a friend of the couple, will go to photograph the Székelys, as well as André Borderie and other artists. She humorously poses Pierre Székely at the same height as his organically shaped creations, and photographs him together with Véra discussing their work – of which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish who is the author. The prints reveal free-form sculptures that play on balance and proportion. This exhibition of Agnès Varda presents previously unpublished photographs of the artists she had posing next to their works or whom she captured immersed in their creative work.

Photo: Agnès Varda, Calder, Richier, Schlegel, Székely par Agnès Varda, Instalation view Galerie Nathalie Obadia-Brussels, 2022, Courtesy Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Info: Curator: Rosalie Varda, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 8 rue Charles Decoster, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 14/1-5/3/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.nathalieobadia.com