Fred Lancôme
(1911–1997)
In this tortured age it is stimulating to discover that some men still cleave to the essential beauty and dignity of man.
One of these is Fred Lancôme.
—Ormande Plater, 1958
Artist’s Statement
My work is an expressed feeling shaped into form… an invisible becoming visible… I try to convey the significance of the individual and of human relations… [and] attempt to express… the necessity for an intense inner life in order to cope with outer life, creating a harmony between both. I feel this extreme interest in inanimate things is not conducive to life and is making for a deadening emptiness. The resulting alienation from ourselves is deeply distressing to me. For this reason I frequently picture moods of warmth and affection through the fusion of two bodies: moods of contemplation and meditation. Reduced to essentials, I try, with the greatest economy of lines, to achieve a life-giving force; in diffused forms to reveal through the human body man’s unlimited resources. I beleive that… this infinite abundance… can lead man to merge his inner and outer resources into a more meaningful life.
—Fred Lancôme, A Sculptor Speaks to the Onlooker, 1966
“The fluid quality of Fred Lancôme is once again evoked in Awakening as is his use of the curve gives his figure great activity. ”