Strength / Weightlifting - Lot 66

Strength / Weightlifting "THE STRENGTH Bronze group, unsigned, titled on the terrace Height: 55 cm - Base: 12.5 x 14 cm This brutally powerful work could be by Maspoli, Lyon's champion sculptor. In those Belle Epoque days, when faded pink rubbed shoulders with heartbreaking gray, there had been a world strength championship at the Moulin Rouge in 1903, when this athlete had perhaps inspired a handsome anonymous artist. A certain Vansart was bending a nail measuring 18 cm and 1.1 cm in diameter, like a straw. Others were tearing up bundles of playing cards... In the Belle Epoque, weightlifters and wrestlers, on the placard or on the stage of a rickety barrack, or even in a more plush hall, went to great lengths to make ends meet, in a show where skill and suppleness competed with strength. The chain breakers who rubbed shoulders with the absolute belonged to a kind of aristocracy. Here, there were no rigged weights, or only a few.