Exposition "René Iché, l'art en lutte" au Musée Toulouse-Lautrec

In 2024 – the anniversary year of the 70th anniversary of the artist's death, the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of France and the centenary of Surrealism – the Toulouse-Lautrec museum presents a large-scale monographic exhibition bringing together, thanks to loans from from the family collection, private collections and public collections, more than a hundred works by René Iché. The motif of struggle understood as carnal hand-to-hand combat or as combat, resistance, defense of a cause, is at the heart of his work and constitutes the guiding principle of this exhibition.

Through several themes – Intimate, Literature and poetry, Bodies in struggle, Wars and commitment – ​​this exhibition shows the diversity of René Iché's work and his exemplary political commitment. A selection of nudes in ink on paper completes the sculpted selection.

Close to Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, supported by Antoine Bourdelle, this veteran of the First World War designed his first sketches of Succumbing Man or Wrestlers in Montparnasse. Two decades later, when he joined the Resistance within the Musée de l'Homme network, Iché took them up again and declined them in an almost obsessive manner. Very early on, he accompanied the themes and commitments of the surrealists as evidenced by his Inconnu de la Seine and his masks by André Breton and Paul Eluard. In the 1930s and 1940s, Iché produced portraits and statues which are as much psychological figures as manifestos. After the Liberation, he placed his Hostages of Puiseaux or Wrestlers of Carcassonne in an open space where monumental sculpture combines with architecture. In 1954, he died prematurely in Paris when he had just been appointed to design the Monument to the Martyrs of Auschwitz.

Full price giving access to the permanent collection and the current temporary exhibition: €10

Price giving access only to the current temporary exhibition: €6

Reduced rate applicable to students over 18, job seekers, RSA beneficiaries and the person accompanying a person with a disability, (upon presentation of proof): €5

Free admission granted to children up to and including 17 years of age, to people with disabilities, to holders of an ICOM card, press, or tour guide (upon presentation of proof).