Raymond Duchamp-Villon, LE CHEVAL MAJEUR, bronze, 150cm.

Mme Marcel Duchamp, Paris
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Acquired by the present owner in 1988

Sculptures de Duchamp-Villon, (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Louis Carré,  Paris, 1963, illustration of another cast (from the edition measuring 100cm.) p. 39
George Heard Hamilton & William C. Agee, Raymond Duchamp-Villon (exhibition catalogue),  New York, 1967, no. 9, illustration of another cast from the collection of Louis Carré, p.101
Pierre Cabanne, Les 3 Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Neuchatêl, 1975, illustration of another cast (from the edition measuring 100cm.) p. 131
Duchamp-Villon: Collection de Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne et du Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen, Musée des beaux-arts, Rouen, 1998-99, no. 49b, illustration in colour of the cast in the collection of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, p. 105; illustrations of other casts pp. 100-04 

Duchamp-Villon's series of sculptures after the abstracted form of a horse in motion is undoubtedly his most important achievement as an artist and is a landmark of cubist sculpture. The subject evolved over several months, between the spring and autumn of 1914, from a rapidly-worked composition entitled Horse and Rider, through a series of studies of the horse alone, each successive study becoming more and more dynamic and finely-articulated.

While the image of the horse as machine was well established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Duchamp-Villon was primarily influenced by the Italian Futurists. Marinetti's radical text, the Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, published on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909, equates the imagery of the machine and animal as 'broad-chested locomotives  prancing on the rails, like huge steel horses bridled with long tubes'. The main credo of the Futurist Movement was to celebrate the technological era, its artists infusing their work with dynamism, energy and motion, venerating the spirit of the machine. These principles were a direct influence on Duchamp-Villon's work and it is in the present sculpture that we can most clearly ascertain and admire its impact.

John Golding has provided the following account of the evolution of this sculpture: 'Le Cheval, Duchamp-Villon's most important single sculpture, which was executed in 1914 from studies begun in the previous year shows that, like his brothers, he was strongly attracted to Futurism. Even in the preliminary maquette which is now in the Gemeente Museum in Amsterdam, the anatomy of the horse is reduced to semi-mechanical forms which serve to give a sense of power and strength. The finished work is more abstract, and the machine-like quality of the forms has been deliberately exaggerated' (J. Golding, Cubism: A History and an Analysis, 1907-1914, 1959, p. 170). William C. Agee has added further perspectives on this work's importance in stating: 'It (the Horse) marks the emergence of a cubist sculpture as complex and subtle as Cubist painting yet determined by purely sculptural terms, independent of all painterly association... Duchamp-Villon's architectural conception of sculpture, realized through the principles of cubism, was at heart of a profound alteration of sculpture in this century. By breaking from the carved monolith and creating a sculpture that could be composed, designed, constructed and assembled with the flexibility of collage, Duchamp-Villon helped to reverse, like Cubist painting itself, the entire Renaissance tradition' (G. H. Hamilton & W. C. Agee, Raymon Duchamp-Villon, 1967, pp.100-03).

The present work shows the artist's sculpture in its most mature and finished state, the horse becoming a bold and finely-tuned machine. While Duchamp-Villon had wished to enlarge his final version of the Cheval, his death in 1918 prevented him from doing so. In 1930-31, his brother Jacques Villon authorised an enlargement measuring 100cm. in height - Le Grand Cheval - and in 1966, Marcel Duchamp, with the help of the sculptor Émile Giliola, supervised the casting of the 150cm. high casts, namely Le Cheval Majeur. Examples from the various editions can be found in major museums around the world; the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Georges Pompidou), The Art Institute of Chicago, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to name but a few.