[SHAPES IN LIGHT, text written by Sylvie Autef, in the Catalogue of the exhibition ENVOL]

After brilliant studies in Egyptology at the Ecole du Louvre, associated with an initiation to sculpture on stone and bronze, Judith DEVAUX developed her passion for animals during her stay at the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where she had a studio for several years.

With an independent spirit, strongly grounded to earth and nature, this thirty-something artist expresses in the face of her models a strong need of truth and sincerity.

Made in bronze, cranes, flamingos, ducks, moorhens… grow and glow in the light. Judith is looking for something timeless, the way she creates the volumes express the movement. By liberating the strengths resumed in the shape, she gives birth to the bronze and this kind of acte d’amour really touches us at our deepest.

[ ENVOL exhibition, Juin 2002]

[ENCOUNTER, text written by Sylviane MAIGRET, coordinator of the Contemporary Art Fair ‘Histoires Naturelles’ at the National Museum of Natural History, in the Catalogue of the exhibition ENVOL]

Seven years ago, I met Judith DEVAUX in her studio, located at the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and discovered her works. Immediately I understood that Judith didn’t only have an artistic streak but was also strong-willed and very open-minded. She is not the kind of person who complains about life. She will take stance and take lead of her destiny. At that time, her gift for sculpture was already confirmed thanks to a great sense of observation and a good balance of proportions but her work needed more maturity. I was sure that with time...

Soon after this first meeting, her Vulture in bronze was selected by the board of the first Naturalist Artists Salon at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris; this piece of work was met with great success. With time, her technique has developed and has acquired maturity.

Her works express tenderness, humour and beauty, as well as a sense of liberty which stay close to the most real attitude expressed by the animal.

[Invitation card Gallery NIPPUR, solo exhibition, autumn 2007.]

[Press release, edition of the ‘fruit basket with falcon, , ODIOT 2004 ]

ODIOT opens up its universe to an assertive artist by commissioning the animal sculptor Judith Devaux for the creation of a hooded falcon which decorates this basket. From Judith Devaux’s long work of observation emerges a truth, expressed by a synthetic approach of shape which favours an exactness in the attitude and from which springs out the vital spirit of the work. The rounded and tense lines of the falcon represent its profound essence and its movement deceitfully immobile. With this fruit basket of a very contemporary construction, ODIOT combines the know-how of great French goldsmith craftsmanship and also enlarges its creative palette with a renewed figurative search full of audacity and freedom.