Morocco 1932-33 (click the picture to read the legend)
STAY IN NORTH AFRICA 1932-1933
The French sculptor Georges Armand Lacroix obtained in 1932 the Paris City Prize with the sculpture « Nausicaa »
This was a grant for a year-long stay in North Africa. He arrived at Algiers in autumn 1932 and left Tangier in 1933.
He stayed at the Bahia Palace in Marrakech during a few months, at the same time as his friend, the Tunisian painter Jules Lellouche (1903-1963). The Bahia Palace accomodated for a short time artists (painters and sculptors). Georges Armand Lacroix met his future wife, Elizabeth Klein (1909-1984) an American painter, graduated from the Massachusetts School of Art. Elizabeth Klein was on a one-year study tour with her painter’s friend, Barbara Bigelow. They arrived at Marrakech on early December 1932 and settled at the Bahia Palace for two months and a half and then stayed a few more months in Marrakech.
They decided to rent all together, for a few months, a Riad in Marrakech, this place was their home and their studio. ( a Riad is a type of traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden or courtyard)
They visited together many sites of Morocco, as well as the south of Spain. They exhibited their works in 1933 at the gallery of Mr. Letellier at 115, Djema El Fna square in Marrakech.
Georges Armand Lacroix has also stayed in Fez in the “Studios of Boujeloud”.
* The sculpture « Nausicaa » is part of the collections of la Piscine de Roubaix Museum of Art and Industry located in the city of Roubaix in the north of France. It is exhibited since 2011 on the edge of the former swimming pool. Three busts made in Morocco (1932-1933) are also part of the museum’s collections and are exhibited there. Museum of Art and Industry Roubaix « la Piscine » 59100 Roubaix, France.
A bronze copy of the bust of a young blind man, made in Morocco in 1933, is exhibited at the musée des Années 30, Espace Landowski, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt.