Marta Pan, sculptural thought

The exhibition has been made possible with the support of the Marta Pan Foundation and the Galerie Mitterrand. It explores the evolution of Pan’s artistic work over a period of intense creativity and sculptural accomplishment. The collection of works on display conveys the close ties of the artist with the Maison Liaigre. Here, architecture and materials are in conversation with purity and sobriety.

From the 1950s until the first decade of the twenty-first century, Pan linked her sculpture closely with architecture. Her work was imbued with an original relationship to nature, architecture, light, space, and time. The works on the top floor of 77 Faubourg Saint-Honoré enhance the volumes and brightness of this high-ceilinged, beautiful former artist’s studio. In Pan’s relationship to nature there is also a prominent aspect of convergence. The various phases of her work reveal her close observations of plants, fruit, and shells. With every new medium, each new species of tree, the artist worked patiently to get to the truth of each, and each work displays perfect harmony between the form and the medium. In close relationship with architectural space, Pan’s sensual sculptural works are decidedly contemporary.

Meeting André Wogenscky, who would later become her husband of many years, was paramount in the evolution of her work. Wogenscky was a major architect and Le Corbusier’s first collaborator. It was with him that Pan conceived her work, at the crossroads between sculpture and architecture. Each learned from the other; their perception of the world brought them so close together that their respective oeuvres became fusional. Their house, built in 1952 in Saint-Rémy-les-Chévreuse, south-west of Paris, bears convincing testimony to their vision of space and aesthetic sense.