Oleksiy Bondarenko, Скульптури навколо прикрашеного будинку / Sculptures around decorated house

all images showing parts of the art environment

are screen prints of the videos (see documentation)

The sculpture of a rearing horse pictured above is located in an art environment in the small village of Runguri with about 2500 inhabitants (2010), located in the southwest of Ukraine near the city of Kolomyia.

Runguri, together with other villages in the area, is part of a united territorial community with Pechenizhyn as its main town.

Life and works

This art environment was created by Oleksiy Bondarenko, who was born in Pechenizhyn, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

Bondarenko worked for 35 years as a decorator at a large furniture factory in Pechenizhyn. In 1995 the factory was privatized and it went bankrupt in 2013.

Around 1995 Bondarenko left the factory and everything indicates that he  was retired. 

He moved from Pechenizhyn to Runguri, where he settled in a house with a ground floor and an upper space. And then he apparently had enough free time to convert the outdoor area of the house, which was initially swampy, into a garden. 

But the best indication is, that at that time as a self-taught artist he started to make sculptures, an activity about which there are no reports that he was making such creations before.

The picture above and the one below show how Bondarenko decorated the exterior of his new house with sculptures and other decorative items.

Bondarenko made an extensive number of sculptures

The sculptures Bondarenko made to decorate the house represent only a small part of the very extensive number of creations he would produce from the mid-1990s. 

These sculptures are partly situated in the garden at the house, and partly they also ended up with interested private persons or institutions.

picture from touristic website I go to world

The photo above shows an example of a sculpture in an institution's collection. It is a statue in front of the Alex Dovbusha Museum in Pechenizhyn, depicting Dovbusha, leader of an independence movement in the area, active in the late 1730s.

When creating the sculptures, Bondarenko first makes an infrastructure of iron wire and mesh, which he covers with a mixture of cement, sand, liquid glass, glue and the moisture-resistant agent ceresit. In addition to this high level of Bondarenko's technique, he showed himself to be a fast worker. For example, to make a life-sized sculpture of a horse he just needs some four days

A garden with a variety of life-size sculptures

The creations in Bondarenko's garden include sculptures of all kinds of animals,  (historical) persons as well as ensembles and installations.

Bondarenko's sculptures have a strikingly realistic appearance. 

This can be seen in the life-size depictions of the animals, such as the horses in various poses and the oxen pulling a cart, and the many creations he made from other animals, such as a group of white swans on a rotating device, a lion, a peacock  a deer, a hare, and so on. 

And the realistic appearance is also present in the portrayals of persons. 

In this regard Bondarenko has said: "You must also know the anatomy of animals and people, so that the figures do not lose their proportions. We must also not forget the details of costumes and facial expressions. When I sculpt historical characters, I carefully study their portraits"

In a number of his sculptures Bondarenko portrayed persons from various ethnic groups living in Ukraine, such as the Cossacks (he made a sculpture that has been placed on the island of Khortytsya in the Djnepr river, an island which is said to be the cradle of the Zaporozhian Cossacks) and also the Hutsuls, an ethnic group of Ukrainian pastoral highlanders inhabiting the Hutsul region in the Carpathian Mountains, distinguished by their colorful, richly ornamented folk dress

But in his sculptures of persons Bodarenko also depicted well known Ukrainian politicians, musicians businessmen and other persons, the various characters often being arranged into ensembles.

There are also ensembles that are set up in a specifically secluded part of the site, such as a the scene below with sculptures of a woman (probably the virgin Mary), a young girl  and a shepherd (?) arranged in a chapel-like structure with an angel in the foreground, a scene probably representing the annunciation of the Holy Virgin.

Finally, this art environment also includes some hand-built devices that testify to Bondarenko's technical skills, such as windmills, merry-go-rounds and special swings.

The decorated garden attracts many visitors, adults as well as children, but also bridal couples who come to take photo sessions amidst the sculptures and the play equipment.

Documentation

* Wikipedia

* Article (May 2017) on the website of Dzerkalo Media, with a series of pictures

* Article May2017) on website Firtka

* Short article (October 2, 2020) on website Kurs, with the video of October 1, 2020, shared below 

Videos

* Video (3'10", October 1, 2020, YouTube, ) by regional public TV NTK-Channel

* Video (2020, YouTube, 31'08"), also by regional public TV NTK-Channel, entitled History of a village: Runguri, with various scenes of life in the community of Runguri, Bondarenko and his site being presented from 17'51" -  19'20"

Oleksiy Bondarenko

Sculptures around decorated house

Runguri,  Kolomyia district, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine

visitors welcome

Robert Bretin, Jardin avec sculptures grandeur nature de gens de paille / Garden with life-size representations of people of straw

 all pictures (around 2017)

courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, from her weblog

Located in the south-west of France, some 45 km east of Bordeaux, the community of Les Peintures is home to an art environment in the capacity of a garden decorated with  life-size depictions of people in all kinds of situations in daily life.

Life and works

This garden, situated along the departmental road D674 that crosses Les Peintures, was begun in the early 1990s by Robert Bretin, a retired mason, about whom the internet has no further biographic information.

Bretin became inspired to make such creations because of a tradition that originated in the community of Campan, in the French Pyrenees, where life-size dolls -in Occitan called mounaques- were placed along the roads in the summer, a tradition that has now spread to many villages in the area of the Hautes-Pyrénées.

For example, in Boussan, a village of 200 inhabitants, three times in summer there is a exuberant display of groups of mounaques made by numerous residents. representing events with a daily or festive character, such as a baker at work or a family celebrating a wedding.

The bodies of these life size creations are traditionally made of straw and dressed with discarded garments. 

Bretin also made his creations from straw, dressing them with second hand clothes he regularly bought or was offered by acquaintances.

The accessories of the straw people may depend on the time of the year, taking into account days such as Easter, Halloween, the French National Day (Storming the Bastille) on July 14, Armistice Day (End of WWI) on November 11 and Christmas.

The faces of the creations seem to consist partly of commercial masks, partly they appear to come from shop-window dolls from earlier times, especially those with hairdos. The available documentation doesn't have information about this.

Bretin has arranged the creations in his garden in a cozy way. People can be seen sitting around a table enjoying a meal, a child is swinging, someone is catching a fish, people are talking or walking together.... 

Documentation 

* Article (December 2011) in regional newspaper Sud Ouest

* Posts (March 20 and 21, 2018) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit, general impression and detailed pictures

Robert Bretin

Sculpture garden

18 lieu dit Champ du Mil

33230 Les Peintures, dept Gironde, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

the garden, located along the departmental road D674 that crosses

the village can be seen from the street

streetview

Alcide Teynac, Les Grottes du Luc / The Caves of Luc

exterior of the caves with pond and garden

postcards licensed under Wikimedia Commons,

the photos on all postcards have been made by Marcel Delboy (1882-1941)

Espiet is a small community with currently some 800 inhabitants, located in the south-west of France, about 30 km east of Bordeaux. 

Fallen into oblivion over the years, in the first decades of the 20th century the community featured a self-made complex of decorated caves called Les grottes du Luc (The Caves of Luc). 

Life and work

The complex of caves was built from cement between 1904 and 1928 by Alcide Teynac. The internet has no information about the dates of birth or death of this self-taught artist. But it has been reported that he lived in Espiet, was a beekeeper by profession, loved to compose songs in his spare time and wrote a book, self-published in 1927, entitled Isabeau de Curton.

And he also worked for around thirty years on the construction of a complex of decorated caves.

With regard to this creation the main source of information  is a series of postcards dating from the early years of the 20th century. So here we go.....

The first postcard, at the top of this post, gives a general impression of the place where the caves were located: a pond flanked by a series of structures, which may have housed the caves, all situated 200 meters from the railway station of Espiet ¹. 

In the photo above there is not much to distinguish apart from the rocky structures, but the caption on the map suggests that this is the entrance to the cave system. It is mentioned that there is a secret door that connects the entrance to another room, a door that will open on command

And the caption also refers to a menhir, a dolmen, a chair (or a pulpit) and a rock, but it is not clear whether these items were part of the entrance area or were situated elsewhere in the caves.

The photo above shows that Alcide Teynac also added sculptures to the interior of the caves. This is a natural-sized representation of a prehistoric family carved in bas-relief. This piece of rock can also rotate and then provides access to the next space.

The caption on above postcard says that here the Gothic door is depicted. It probably gives entrance to the room of stalactites, bisons and other animals, incised or painted.

On the postcard above, the explanatory text is difficult to read, but it says that this is a representation of:  

"Aquarium, the door closed by a rock opens to the floor, descent by a staircase carved in the rock, the Pendelogue, the Virgin, Boudha, the Devil's Tower, the Theater of Nature, the stalactites and the stone draperies, the secret closet" ......

Well then, that is a large series of all kinds of creations, which, moreover, are practically not distinguishable in the postcard.

This enumeration of creations, together with the creations mentioned in the other postcards, indicates that Teynac with his Grottes du Luc has delivered a piece of work that deserves a place in the field of art environments.

For now, however, it can only be concluded that this is far from the case, because the internet neither  has referrals to informative articles about the Caves, nor information that could be used to compile a coherent description of the site.

 

The data about this creation are so scarce that it has not become known what became of the >Grottes after the death of their creator.

Documentation

* One of the few scholarly remarks on the internet about Teynac is in: 

Veronique Moulinié, D’une architecture à l’autre : Les habitants paysagistes et le Musée d’Art Moderne de Lille-Métropole, à Villeneuve d’Ascq (2010) (Programme interdisciplinaire de recherche Art, architecture, paysage Sessions 2004 et 2005) Alcide Teynac is referred to as follows:

"En Gironde, entre 1904 et 1928, Alcide Teynac construisit des grottes artificielles, pur chef-d’œuvre de ciment, dont il orna les murs d’une vision très personnelle de la préhistoire, art pariétal et équipement de chasse compris". (In Gironde, between 1904 and 1928, Alcide Teynac built artificial caves, a pure masterpiece of cement, the walls of which he adorned with a very personal vision of prehistory, cave art and hunting equipment).

note

¹ The railway line that was served by the station, in 1954 has been disbanded and the building now houses a restaurant. 

Alcide Teynac

Grottes de Luc

Espiet, dept Gironde, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

there is no informatie available about

the fate of the site after its author died

József Balogh, Zdobený dom / Decorated House

facade of the house 

(pictures published here in agreement with Georgó Fülöp) 

The picture above shows the decorated facade of a house in the small village of Pribenik, located in the south-east of Slovakia, near the borders of this country with both Hungary and Ukraine. In the past the village has also been part of alternately Hungary or Ukraine and currently many inhabitants still have a Hungarian origin.

Life and works 

The decorations of the house, meanwhile removed, were added by József Balogh, who was born on January 3, 1920 in a peasant family in Vojka, some 12 km north-west of Pribenik,

In October 1941, at age 21, he was enlisted to the Hungarian army. Deployed in the war fought by Germany and allies against Russia, he ended up in a Russian prisoner of war camp.

After the war Balogh settled in Pribenik, where he became the local shoemaker. He married and his wife Margit and he had four children, two of whom would die at a young age.

Balogh was a sturdy man, with long hair, who made his own clothes and, if it suited him, was dressed in shorts, a way of doing most villagers did not understand much about.

the roof in detail

Around 1978 the villagers would be even more surprised. Balogh was in his late fifties, the two children had left home and he started to decorate the house,  a project he would be engaged with for the next decades.

Roaming the region by bicycle, he collected all kinds of discarded items, such as bicycle wheels, dolls, plastic bottles, windmills and other finds, which he attached to the sloping front part of the roof of the house, as can be seen in the picture above

 detail of the facade 

 

As the picture above shows,  the wall at the front of the house, under the roof, was partly decorated with small semicircular mosaics directly under the eaves, and furthermore with larger square mosaics between the windows. which in turn were provided with colorful curtains.

Balogh used broken pottery, old pieces of porcelain and colored glass for his mosaics.

The square surfaces on the wall at the front of the house seem to have included mosaics with a mainly decorative look, geometrically ordered abstract configurations.

But Balogh also made mosaics with a more narrative character and more or less recognizable characters, such as in the image above, in which a fish can be seen as well as an animal that could be a two-headed bird.

The picture above shows that the two-headed bird and the fish are depicted in the context of a larger mosaic that might represent an elephant.

Balogh has remained active in updating his creation until old age. In 2008, when he was at the age of 88, the regional newspaper Novy Cas (see documentation) visited Balogh and reported that in the previous year he had once more adjusted the facade and the fence of his house.

The newspaper also reported that Balogh's health was deteriorating. 

He died in 2009

The house with the decorations has been demolished

After Balogh's death his property, that included two buildings, was sold and the new owner demolished the house with the decorations. 

In the following years Balogh's art environment gradually fell into oblivion.

This probably would have remained so, if not in the course of 2019 Gergó Fülöp, who as a young boy lived in Pribenik and in the 1990s on his way to school passed Balogh's decorated house, decided to take action to keep the memory of Balogh's creation alive and to give the site a place in the field of art environments. 

Fülöp, who had become an artist running an exhibition space, organized an exhibition (January-March 2020) in his art gallery in Budapest and wrote an article that in April 2020 was published on the Polish website PrzeKrój (see documentation).

Recently Raw Vision also reported about this development. 

Exposition in Budapest in 2020 

,

As said, from January until March 2020 the art-gallery Kavics (Pebble, in English) in Budapest, managed by Georgó Fülöp, had an exhibition about József Balogh entitled Práci Mesterúr (Work of a master!).  

Thinking back to what he had experienced in his early years passing Balogh's decorated house, Gergó Fülöp in the course of 2019 realized that József Balogh represented a breath of fresh air. 

As he noted: 

"This man had very few material riches and at times went through hardships, yet he did not pursue wealth or fame through his works. József was able to see value in things that weren’t valued by others; he was able to find fulfillment, precisely because he focused on those small pleasures that brought him joy. At a time when it might feel like the world is collapsing, perhaps we can all learn something from József and seek solace in simplicity'  (quote from Fülöp's article The Humble Poet, see documentation)

Indeed, that is why it is so satisfying to add Balogh's creation to the inventory of art environments this weblog is

Documentation
* Article (April 2008) in newspaper Nový Cas (with a series of pictures)
* Article by Georgó Fülöp, "The Humble Poet. A Local Cobbler's Folk Art", on website PrzeKrój (April 28, 2020)

* Introduction to and a series of photos of Balogh's work, a document on Georgó Fülöp's website, edited in the context of the exposition early 2020 

* The website of the municipality of Pribenik has a photo gallery with pictures of the site
video

* Documentary film Balogh József, Pribenik 66 (16'08", 1996) by Peter Kerekes, Martin Kollár and Marek Šulík (on Vimeo)

József Balogh 

Decorated house
Pribenik 66
Slovakia

Albert Diekmann, Replik im Vorgarten / Replicas in front yard

replica of Neuschwanstein Castle (Schwangau, Germany)
pictures: screenprints from the Merca2.tv video
(see documentation)

The picture above shows a replica of the famous Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany, as it can be seen in the front yard of a house in the small village of Abbensen, part of the municipality of Wedermark, located north of the German city of Hannover.

This replica and eleven others, all located in the front yard, were created by Albert Diekmann.

Life and works

Diekmann was born in the early 1940s and worked in an office job with the German Railways, a job he retired from in the late 1990s. 

The beginning of his activity as creator of an art environment was in the year 1998, when his wife received a scale model of a castle as a present for the garden. The model was made of a kind of cardboard and Diekmann thought that if small stones were added, the model would be more realistic and better protected against influences of the weather.

replicas of the Eiffel Tower in Paris 
and the Big Ben in London

Diekmann got to work on this and was so enthusiastic about this type of activity that he then started working on his first replica.

In 1999 this piece of work, a grandfather clock, was completed and -somewhat hidden- it is still standing in the front garden. For the next twenty years or so, Diekmann would focus entirely on making relatively large-scale replicas of famous buildings in Germany and elsewhere in the world. 

The front yard currently (2020) includes twenty creations, including Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Big Ben in London and the Washington Capitol, all depicted in this post. There are also replicas of the Johannis Chapel, which is near Diekmann's house, and of the Water Tower in Lehrte, 17 km east of Hannover.

A few years ago, due to his age, Diekmann decided not to make any new creations, but to focus on the maintenance of the site. In August 2020 the site got a lot of publicity in regional newspapers and TV.

A labor-intensive and time-consuming activity

For the various parts of a creation Diekmann made wooden molds, which were provided with iron wire mats for strength. To these molds a layer of a few centimeters of poured concrete was added, which then had to harden for a few weeks before the different elements could be merged.

To give an example, here is how the construction of the replica of Neuschwanstein went. 

As there are no construction drawings of this structure available, Diekmann used a 3D jigsaw puzzle as a guide. Establishing that the highest part of the building should be around 1.80 meter high, he could then determine the different dimensions of the composing parts of the structure, such as the towers and the various individual buildings that make up the complex.

All in all, the construction of this replica took him almost a year,

the Capitol in Washington

Diekmann has apparently tried to render the various buildings as realistic as possible. For example, the Big Ben is equipped with the necessary dials that also indicate the correct time. The Eiffel Tower also has an authentic look, although the replica is not made from iron, but from concrete slabs. 

The various creations are each individually constructed to scale, the scale of each structure probably being determined by what for Diekmann was a workable height. This might explain why the replicas of the Eiffel Tower and of the Big Ben have almost the same height, when in reality the Eiffel Tower is three times as high.

Documentation\
* Article (August 2015) in regional journal Hannoversche Allgemeine

* Article (August 2020) on the website of broadcasting company NDR1 Niedersachsen, with a series of pictures of the site

* Article (August 2020) in regional journal Süddeutsche Zeitung

* Article (August 2020) on the website of RTL Germany
Video
* Video by Merca2.tv (2020, 5'45". Daily Motion)

Albert Diekmann
Replicas in front garden

Alte Zollstrasse
Abbensen, municipality of Wedemark, Lower Saxony, Germany
the site can be seen from the street

Lubomir Votava, Dům a zahrada zdobené panenkami / House and garden decorated with dolls

pictures courtesy of Justyna Orlovska from her website

"Off the Beaten Track"

In the field of art environments in Europe, there are some sites with a decoration mainly composed of dolls, such as those of Francis Barale (France), Daina Kučere (Latvia) and Margarita Travkina (Russia). This small group of creations can be complemented by a site in the Czech Republic curated by Lubomira Votava.

Life and works

Votava was born in the early 1960s in Havlíčkův Brod, a town in the Vysočina region of the Czech Republic.

Initially he worked as a tractor driver. In 1989 he attended a rally of the Republican Party, often referred to as extreme right and represented in the Czech parliament from 1992-1998. Votava joined that party, working his way up to become an advisor and bodyguard to the party's leader.

In that capacity, Votava gained notoriety for some incidents, like he punched an opponent with his fists. Later he was convicted for being violent against a journalist, after which he left the world of politics and in 1998 retired to the small village of Rváčov, also located in the Vysočina region.

Votava settled in Rváčov in a simple house, built around 1870, initially inhabited by his grandparents and thereafter used by his parents as a summer home.

Rváčov was now in his late thirties and living on his own. Away from the urban hustle and bustle of Prague, Votava now focused on the quiet rural life in the village.

Especially pleased with the garden located between the cottage and the main road that crosses the village, he spent a lot of time maintaining it. He built a pond with his own hands and from ten kilometers away, in a wheelbarrow he carried  a large amount of stones into the garden, some of these stones being three feet high

As a result, in 2016 the garden was reviewed in the Czechian magazine Chatar Chalupář, a practice-oriented monthly magazine about housing and lifestyle.

But what would make him known, both in the village and beyond, was not the composition of garden, but the special way in which he provided house and garden with decorations.

From his early years a lover of old toys and discarded dolls, he started to decorate interior and exterior especially with dolls, which he obtained from people around who wanted to get rid of them, which he found in trash cans or which sometimes were just left behind by people, deposited at the garden's entrance.

About a thousand dolls cover the outer wall of the house and are attached to the branches of trees in the garden.

Varied reactions

His way of decorating house and garden, which is visible from the main road that runs through the village, has led to varied reactions among the residents, both appreciation and disgust or fear.

Votava has said he doesn't exhibit the dolls to scare passers-by. He wants to prevent them from ending up in the garbage and being destroyed. He has explained that for him dolls are a medium from which energy passes. Looking at some dolls he sees in their eyes the child that played with them many years ago.

This train of thought is reflected in most arrangements of the dolls, as demonstrated in the pictures above.

But an arrangement like the one in the photo above, in which dolls -partly without a head- are suspended from a rope around their necks, arouses less sweet associations.

So in presenting both the lovely and the harshness, this art environment shows an ambiguity. It is not clear if this ambiguity is intended or unintentional, but in any case it can confuse a potential visitor.

Documentation

* Article (November 2014) on the website of TN Nova, with a short video and a serie of pictures
* Series of photos with explanation (December 2015) on website Off the Beaten Track, edited by Justyna Orlovska
Videos
* Detailed impression of the site in wintertime (November 2015, YouTube, 14'35")

* Video by Vladimír Havlíček (July 2019, YouTube, 3'57") with Votava talking about the collection

Lubomir Votava
House and garden decorated with dolls
Rváčov, Vysočina region, Czech Republic
can be seen from the road

Antoine Paucard, Musée des sculptures / Museum of sculptures

all pictures (2015) courtesy of Sébastien Colpin

from his website

In Saint-Salvadour, a commune of a few hundred inhabitants in the Corrèze area in central France, there is a small museum that exhibits granite sculptures created by Antoine Paucard, a retired mason who was born in that village and lived there most of his life.

Life and works

The son of one of the last millers in the community, Paucard was born on December 5, 1886. After his primary education, which he completed in 1897, he did not follow any further courses, but went to work.

Initially he probably had jobs in or around the village, but in August 1906 he joined the French army, becoming part of a unit based in Africa, the Regiment 3 of the African Hunters (Chasseurs d'Afrique). Paucard left the army in 1909 after an accident in which he lost an eye due to a horse kick. 

He stayed in Paris for some time and then returned to his native village to start working as a farmer.  

In 1915 Paucard married Françoise Cérézat. The couple would have a son and a daughter.

After World War I he became a mason, a job that in this period was important because of the post-war reconstruction. Sometimes alternated with farming, Paucard would continue working as a mason until his retirement in the late 1940s/early 1950s.

As a mason Paucard in particular focused upon building houses, and it has been reported that his predilection to express in a notebook what was on his mind, entailed that each completed house was celebrated with a song included in one of the 120 notebooks he filled between 1930 and 1975, scriptures that became part of his legacy.

Paucard has also manifested himself politically. In 1930 he joined the Communist Party. In 1933 he made a trip to the USSR, from where he returned disappointed. The book in which he explained this, Un mois en Russie, par un paysan de la Corrèze (A month in Russia, by a peasant from Corrèze), 1934, subsequently led to his break with the party.

During the Second World War, Paucard joined the French resistance and after the war he was mayor of Saint-Salvadour for a year.

In the early 1950s, now retired, he became somewhat disillusioned with politics, and he began to devote himself to making sculptures.

Creating a collection of sculptures

All together Paucard has created about thirty granite sculptures. As the pictures in this post show, these sculptures mostly portray people. 

To indicate what kind of persons it concerns: the sculptures include famous French personalities, such as Charlemagne (= Charles the Great), Napoléon, Richelieu, the generals Margueritte and Nivelle, known from World War I.  There is a sculpture of Saint Salvadour who also names the village.

And then there are portrayals of people from his family circle such as his father and his grandmother and sculptures that depict colleagues from his time as a soldier with the Chasseurs d'Afrique.

To conclude this small overview, it can be noted that Paucard has also portrayed himself. The image directly above shows two people, of whom the one on the right must be Paucard, while the one on the left is a friend named Roger Cronnier.

A special aspect of Paucard's artwork is that many sculptures are provided with inscriptions that explain the scene, sometimes in poetic form, like he also made creations with only text, as aphorisms or philosophical expressions.

Just a single example: in the image above, the text surrounding the globe and the text covered by the stone below read in French: De cette misère la Terre et de sa création, quels en sont le Mystère et ..... surtout  le Destin? ....... Pas le néant sans doute, car il n'est qu'un Non-sens ¹

In English: Of this misery the Earth and its creation, what are the Mystery and ..... especially the Destiny? Not nothingness, no doubt, because it is just Non-sense

This indicates that Paucard's artistic qualities involved making sculptures as well as writing literary and poetic texts.

Paucard did not make his sculptures to sell, he kept them together and housed his creations in a separate shelter near his home, an accommodation he constructed himself and which eventually became a small-scale museum.

Just as Paucard's notebooks include all kinds of personal thoughts and poems, so his sculptures can be seen as just as many representations of persons who in any way were of significance to him. 

And just as the notes in these notebooks joint together acquire a specific meaning, so the collection of sculptures in their mutual relationship gets its own meaning, as is the case in many art environments.

Paucard died on February 18, 1980 at age 94. He was laid to rest in the local cemetery in a family tomb that he had made himself in the 1950s.

His son Roland Paucard, who took care of the sculptures, in consultation with the mayor of the village, bequeathed in 2008 the collection of sculptures and all of Paucard's notebooks to the municipality. The mayor said that in this way the collection of sculptures could remain together and would not be spread over various regional museums.

After the necessary preparations (funds had to be collected to renovate the former courtyard of the school of Saint-Salvadour near the town hall and the collection had to be transferred to their new premises), the Museum was officially opened in November 2010.

The museum is open all year round and can be visited free of charge.

Documentation

* Article in Wikipedia

* Entry (undated) with pictures of the Musée Paucard as it originally was (on a weblog on Free.fr)

* Article (October 2009) on the weblog Algerazur 

* Article (August 2011) on the weblog of Bruno Montpied

* Website about villages in the Corrèze area, with pictures of the Museum in Saint-Salvadour

note

¹ French text available thanks to Revue Recoins

Antoine Paucard
Musée des sculptures
Le Bourg
19700 Saint-Salvadour, dept Corrèze, region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

open all year round, daily from 8 a.m., free access