Etienne Audfray sculptor and friend of Petersen
Etienne Audfray, sculptor, was born on March 10th, 1922, in Combrée (Maine-et-Loire). It has a grandfather and an uncle painters whose names appear today in Bénézit.
His Father, organist, it inherits the taste beautiful, the direction of the harmonious form. With precise graphics of the cartography (its first trade), which encloses it in static stresses and cold, he prefers the spontaneousness of young Article Très he devotes himself to the sculpture. He will be the pupil of Pétersen, Séverec, Joachim, of the Masters who will be able to stimulate his undeniable talent.
In 1958 he met Armand Petersen who will become his friend with which he worked until his death in 1969 and which made of Etienne Audfray his sole heir and donated its workshop to him
In 1959, it enters to the municipal council of Bry-sur-Marne, is elected mayor in 1965, then General adviser in 1982. Art and the policy became for him the two components of the same passion, one which pushes it towards the research of the sculptural beauty, magnifiée in its statuary, the other which involves it towards the multiple tasks of communal management with, in point of organ, research continues enrichment of the city from which he guides his destiny.
He writes: “The city must be the privileged place where the community opens out and not that where it is dehumanized”. More far it affirms: “The Culture is necessary in the city. It is expressed various ways, there is much of it which are directly accessible. The sculpture is, sometimes fortunately, of these”.
January 10th, 1982, with the hands of the President of Senate POHER, it receives the Cross of Knight of the National order of the Merit for its work of administrator to the service of the city. Today Etienne Audfray continues, with the same faith, this patient development of a not very common work.
Etienne Audfray is a sculptor portraitist. Its work understands more than 200 portraits, figures but also many sculptures monumental.