Claude de Soria was born in 1926 in Paris and died there in 2015. Passionate about art from a young age, she took drawing lessons first with André Lhote at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, then with Fernand Léger (1950) before discovering sculpture with Ossip Zadkine (1952). In 1953 she married and moved to the countryside for the next 10 years. It was during this period that Claude de Soria worked primarily with clay.
After returning to Paris, the artist was inspired by models that became more and more abstract: fruit, flowers…and the artists whose works she admired through their exhibitions: Picasso at the Grand and Petit Palais (1966), Degottex (1967) then Hantaï (1968) at the Galerie Fournier, Giacometti (1969) at the Orangerie in the Tuileries, Matisse (1970) at the Grand Palais and the Bourgeois of Calais de Rodin. In 1972 the natural landscapes that she discovered during a trip to the Sahara elicited what amounted to an internal revolution, which was followed by a period of uncertainty.
It is in part thanks to a sac of concrete left behind by one of the construction workers in the backyard of her studio that in 1973, she found her path. From that instant she understood all the possibilities she could explore with this volatile, malleable, buildable material. Over time she built upon multiple experiments: different quantities and different qualities of concrete powder, sand, fiber, water, interior structures that she tested as well as all sorts of containers and supports: glass, rhodoïd, tissue, paper…leading to a genesis of shapes: circles, squares, rectangles, spheres, cylinders…making sure to leave open the possibilities of chance: « I try, with my attitudes of vigilant listening, of availability, floating attention, to not miss any innovation that comes by chance… ». As explained by the artist, this was more of a constant awareness of the material within the frame of a body of work that is always evolving and ready at all times to be questioned and reworked. The process consists of an itinerary between both the artist and her material, but without a long term goal. The exploration of multiple pathways is done with the intention to walk and to explore, to enjoy the landscape that is present and to wait with enthusiasm the apparition around the corner, of a new panorama to admire.
De Soria’s works can be found today in different private and public collections and have been exhibited in numerous institutions: Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Musée Picasso (Antibes), Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), Musée National des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), Fondation Cartier (Paris), …