Edgar Degas

EDGAR DEGAS (Paris, 1834 - 1917).
"Danseuse s'avançant, les bras levés, la jambe droite en avant".
Bronze, copy number 72, letter C.
Signed.
Foundry stamp: Valsuani, lost wax. Edition of 1998.
The authorized edition of this sculpture comprises 29 bronzes. These bronzes are individually stamped with the letters A to T (20 bronzes), as well as 9 stamped with Roman numerals, from I/IX to IX/IX.
Attached certificate issued by the Degas Committee in 2014. Work registered in the database.
Measurements: 62.2 cm (height).

"Ballerina advancing, arms raised, right leg forward" synthesizes Degas' fascination with the world of ballet and his innovative approach to form and movement. It materializes an instant of stillness in the relentless pursuit of movement. The sculpture depicts a young ballerina with her arms raised and her right leg forward in an informal fourth position, the figure conveys a sense of fatigue and discipline. Degas departs from classical idealization to capture an intimate and realistic instant of the ballerinas' life. The surface of the bronze, which deliberately retains the texture and markings of the original wax modeling, reflects Degas's interest in process and materiality, rather than a polished, perfect finish.

This work falls within the last stage of Degas's career, a period when his eyesight was beginning to fail and sculpture became an increasingly important medium for him. It allowed him to explore three-dimensional form and movement in a tactile way, almost like a drawing in space. Dancers were his most recurring subject matter, both in paint and pastel and in sculpture. Similar to many of his paintings and drawings, which often captured private choreographies outside the stage lights, his sculptures tend to focus on private moments: stretching, adjusting a slipper, or, as in this case, simply resting.

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris houses a copy similar to this sculpture, to which he adds the subtitle "première étude", since Degas made different studies of the same pose, demonstrating Degas's working method, based on repetition and exhaustive analysis of the same gesture in order to understand it in its entirety.

This piece, originally conceived in wax and other malleable materials around 1890, was not cast in bronze during the artist's lifetime. Like the vast majority of Degas' sculptures, the bronzes we know today are posthumous casts authorized by his heirs. After Degas' death in 1917, about 150 wax, clay and plasticine sculptures in various states of preservation were discovered in his studio. Seventy-four of the best preserved models were selected to be cast in bronze by the prestigious Parisian foundry A.A. Hébrard between 1919 and 1921.

The edition to which the work under bidding belongs was made by the Valsuani foundry and bears their foundry stamp.

The quality of this casting and the legitimacy of its provenance make this work a unique piece within the sculptural corpus of Degas, of great interest to both private collectors and museum institutions.

The relevance of Edgar Degas in the history of modern art is indisputable: a pioneer in the representation of the body in movement, his sculptural work anticipated many of the formal concerns of the twentieth century. Although conceived as private studies, his sculptures - today present in museums such as the Musée d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum or the National Gallery of Art - are considered fundamental to understanding the transition between the academic tradition and modernity. This piece, therefore, not only embodies Degas' technical mastery, but also his essential place in the canon of modern sculpture.