René Iché (21 January 1897 – 23 December 1954) was a 20th-century French sculptor.
In 1928, he married his model Rosa Achard, known as Renée. His daughter Laurence, who later became a writer, was a model for some of his work.
Iché was a very good friend of Max Jacob, close to Guillaume Apollinaire, Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Zadkine and a childhood friend of Joë Bousquet. He sculpted the faces of André Breton, Paul Éluard and Federico García Lorca.
In his studio of Montparnasse, in 1937, he executed a Guernica sculpture on the day (27 April 1937) of the announcement of this event on the radio station. Upon completing the work he did not wish to exhibit it.
He participated at the Venice Biennale in 1948 with Le Couple (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) and received the Grand Prix de Sculpture in 1953 for Melpomène 36. He was chosen to sculpt the Apollinaire Monument in Paris and an Auschwitz' Memorial in Poland, but both projects were interrupted by his premature death in Paris.
On the manure of the Millennia after geological cataclysms and warlike disasters, only the statues will remain.
Jean-Pierre Melville's film Army of Shadows (L'Armée des ombres, 1969) is based, like the novel of Joseph Kessel, on the Resistance network to which Iché belonged, Cohors-Asturies. The character of Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse) is inspired by Iché.
^ a b c *Robert Maillard, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture, 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141.
^ a b c *Michel Seuphor, The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture. 1959. Zwemmer. Page 282.
^ "René Iché, un artiste engagé resté fidèle à ses origines". L'Indépendant (in French). May 28, 2016.
^ "Laurence Iché". Le Monde (in French). September 29, 2007.
^ Lyford Amy, Surrealist masculinities, Ed. University Presses Of California, Columbia And Princeton (United States), 2007.
^ Peter Read, Picasso and Apollinaire. Ed. University Presses Of California, Columbia And Princeton (United States), April 2008.
Robert Maillard, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture, 1962. Tudor. 310 pages. Page 141.
Michel Seuphor, The Sculpture of this Century, Dictionary of Modern Sculpture. 1959. Zwemmer. 372 pages. Page 282.
Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Index of Artists, International-biographical Including Painters, Sculptors ... 1935. R.R. Bowker Co. 493 pages. ISBN 0-901571-76-8. Page 136.