The Sculptors: Three-dimensional Masterminds

Claude Roussel was born in the middle of summer of 1930. At a very young age, he reproduces the things he sees in his own particular way, and takes on every occasion to create. "At 4 years old, I saw a carved weaving shuttle and I immediately thought it was a boat (...) In primary school I would often be asked to draw on the blackboard; I loved it; it was innate in me."⁸

He gets inspiration as much from nature, when he goes along on hunting and fishing trips with his father, as from the racehorses and illustrations found in l'Encyclopédie de la jeunesse (Youth Encyclopedia). He was 10 when he sculpted his first plane and 14 when he sculpted the replica of a trout caught by his father. "When my father caught his big trout (six and a half pounds), I told him, "We must find a tree, I absolutely wanted to reproduce it by doing a sculpture."⁹