Arman
Nouveau Realiste who sliced, burned, smashed and embedded the objects everyone else was buying.
Arman was born Armand Fernandez in Nice in 1928 and lost the final d of his first name to a printer's error on a 1958 catalogue, which he kept. In 1960 he was among the founding signatories of Nouveau Realisme with Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and the critic Pierre Restany, and the work he is known for is a set of operations performed on mass-produced objects rather than a style. Accumulations pack identical things — spanners, gas masks, watch parts — into resin or a vitrine. Coleres smash or slice an object, usually a musical instrument, and fix the pieces in the order they fell. Poubelles glaze over the contents of a bin. He worked between Nice and New York until his death in 2005.
The single most important question with an Arman is whether the work is unique or an edition, because he produced a great deal of both and they are not always obviously different in a photograph. Sliced and embedded bronzes were cast in numbered editions, sometimes substantial ones; the early accumulations and coleres are one-offs. Numbering, foundry marks and the certificate all matter, and the Arman Studio Archives in New York is where attribution questions are settled.
If you own a work by Arman
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.