Parvine Curie was born in Nancy in 1936 and is of Franco-Iranian origin. After obtaining her baccalaureate she started studying linguistics and went to England, Austria, Spain and Italy to discover these countries. In 1957, she discovered Catalan art and decided to settle in Barcelona, where she created her first sculptures. She lived with the Catalan sculptor Marcel Marti with whom she had a son, David Marti in 1959. In 1960, she presented her first solo exhibition at the French Institute of Barcelona. By 1965, her work was stylized and constructed, notably through the use of iron, bronze, cut aluminum and embossed metal during the following year. The “Gales” fashion store in Barcelona commissioned her to decorate their windows for Christmas: fantastic birds, angels-sirens.<\/p>\n
In May 1968, she created her first M\u00e8res (Mothers), which she presented at Suzanne de Co\u0308nninck’s at the Center for the Integration of the Arts. She left Spain in 1969 to settle in Paris. In 1970, Parvine Curie occupied a studio in the Cit\u00e9 internationale des arts in Paris. At the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture in the Luxembourg Gardens, she presented Premi\u00e8re M\u00e8re, a blend of glued boards painted in black and enhanced with brass. This work was noticed by sculptor Franc\u0327ois Stahly, who saw in it a great resemblance with his work at the time. Stahly and his wife Claude invited her to work with them at the collective workshop in Crestet, in the Vaucluse and then in Meudon. There, Parvine Curie learned the basics of the trade, wood and stone carving. Stahly, for his part, recognizes Parvine’s structuring influence on his work.<\/p>\n
In 1973, after Claude Stahly’s death, Parvine Curie moved in with Franc\u0327ois Stahly for six months in Albany, New York. The landscapes offered by the Rocky Mountains and the discovery of pre-Columbian civilizations strongly influenced her work. She traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, Morocco, India, Egypt, Yugoslavia, and Greece.<\/p>\n
After her divorce from Marcel Marti, she married Stahly. When she returned to France, she received her first public commissions. The first one is located at the Pierre-Be\u0301gon college in Blois. The second work, Me\u0300re Anatolica, is placed in the courtyard of the Pierre-de-Coubertin middle school in Chevreuse, where Pierre Huyghe studied in 1975. This hieratic sculpture partly inspired the sculptor’s career.<\/p>\n
In 1976, the Monnaie de Paris issued small reliefs, sculptures, and later her jewelry in limited editions. In 1979, she received the Bourdelle Prize from a jury consisting of sculptors Penalba, Waldberg, Hajdu, Etienne-Martin, and Couturier. In 1980, the city of Paris purchased a two-meter version of her Mother-Cathedral work in exotic wood for the inauguration of the Museum of Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture on quai Saint-Bernard.<\/p>\n
In 1984, Parvine Curie presented a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes. The same year, the city of Meudon commissioned her to create a monument to the victims of Nazi barbarism, which was made out of Carrara marble. In 1988, the E\u0301lyse\u0301e purchased her sculpture “Me\u0300re-Couloirs” in aluminum as a presidential gift for German chancellor Helmut Kohl. Two years later, a non-commercial edition of twenty-five small pyramids was produced, which President Mitterand offered to heads of state during the Franco-African summit in La Baule.<\/p>\n
Curie’s works were the subject of retrospectives at various venues, including the Jean Arp Foundation in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, and the Jacques-Pre\u0301vert Center in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, in 1994. In 1995, a retrospective of her works was held at the Orangerie of the castle of Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), and in 1999, at the Gothic monastery of Pedralbes and the Maeght gallery in Barcelona.<\/p>\n
In 2000, Curie exhibited her works alongside those of Franc\u0327ois Stahly at the French Institute of Barcelona in Spain. In 2003, she exhibited at the Art Center of Meudon and devoted her time to Franc\u0327ois Stahly, whose health deteriorated; he passed away in 2006. The following year, Curie’s son, David Marti, a painter and poet, also passed away. In 2009, Curie organized a retrospective of her son’s work, which was presented at the Cadaque\u0301s museum.<\/p>\n
In 2012 a new retrospective was put together at the Collegiate Church of St Martin in Angers with musical interventions as well as poetic itineraries on texts and poems by David Marti. The following year in 2013, she was decorated Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (elevated to the rank of Officer in 2021) and participated in the exhibition \u201cLes Femmes Sculpteurs (Women Sculptors)\u201d at the Villa Datris (Isle-sur-Sorgue). In 2015, she participated in the exhibition \u201cDessine-moi une collection\u201d at the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes and created the Parvine Curie \u2013 David Marti Donation fund.<\/p>\n
In 2017 she published a monograph in regards to her retrospective \u201cParvine Curie, Sculptures & Tangkas\u201d presented at the CAMPREDON ART Center in L\u2019Isle\u2011sur\u2011 Sorgue (E. Maison de l\u2019Europe). The following year she participated in the exhibition \u201cLes Pionni\u00e8res: In the Workshops of Women Artists of the 20th century\u201d at Galerie Pierre-Alain Challier and published a monograph at Somogy Editions d\u2019Art in collaboration with Galerie Martel Greiner. In 2021, she was also in the spotlight at the Centre Georges Pompidou (<\/strong>Paris) in regards to the exhibition \u201cThey make abstraction\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parvine Curie was born in Nancy in 1936, of French-Iranian origin. After her studies she left to visit Europe and decided to settle in Barcelona in 1957, discovering Catalan art. She practiced sculpture as an autodidact, following the advice of sculptor Marcel Marti with whom she had a son, David in 1959. In 1970, she moved to Paris and presented at the young sculpture salon, the work Premi\u00e8re M\u00e8re, which marked the sculptor Fran\u00e7ois Stahly. He invites her to come and work alongside him at the collective workshop in Crestet (Vaucluse). Parvine learns the basics of the trade, sculpts wood and stone. She married Stahly in 1975 and subsequently carried out numerous public commissions. Her work, which was initially more hieratic, then evolved into a more dynamic style. Her sculptures, between figures and architecture, and strongly inspired by the places she visited, are marked by pure lines and materials and testify to her constant desire to question space and light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10896,"template":"","artist_cat":[21],"class_list":["post-10926","artist","type-artist","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","artist_cat-sculptor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist\/10926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artist"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preprod.galerieloft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist_cat?post=10926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}