As for the maquettes, notably the celebrated sculpture studies that the artist donated to the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1976, they occupy a special place in Chauvin’s production and, indeed, constitute the third pole of his universe. These are small-scale models of future works that in many instances never came to fruition. Made out of a ductile material, plaster or Plasticine™, they were surely created during the winter months at Malakoff and provide evidence of a monumental, sometimes fantastic, ambition. Imagination reigns supreme in them and gives rise to novel couplings: The fragment of a breast or the curve of a torso combines with a staircase to produce, in miniature, a kind of visionary architecture.
Paul Louis Rinuy
