Le Docteur Schweitzer

This work is an homage to the great Albert Schweitzer, who was born in 1875 in Kayserberg in the Haut-Rhin department, and died in 1965 in Lambaréné, Gabon. He studied theology and philosophy before becoming a minister in Strasbourg. Later, he embarked on medical studies and then went to Lambaréné in Gabon in 1913 to establish a hospital, where he settled after the First World War. He visited Europe and America intermittently to give organ concerts, with these recitals enabling him to fund his hospital. He treated the local inhabitants for free and opened a leper hospital. He wanted to be “a man in service of men”. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.

Georges Boulogne was born in Reims in 1926. His family owned Boulogne-Massin in Roye in the Somme, a company which specialised in monumental masonry and war memorials. At the age of 18 years old, he discovered Art Deco and Surrealism, and exhibited for the first time at the Galerie Royale in Paris, using the pseudonym Géo Boulognet. In 1947 and 1948, he studied painting at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then sculpture with Alfred Janniot from 1951 to 1958.
A sought-after portrait artist, he produced busts of some prominent figures: the Prince of Broglie, the Duke of Noailles, composer Henri Sauguet, the Duke of Uzès, scientist Jean Rostand and Marshal Juin. He was attracted to Surrealism and an admirer of Dali, and he was the first artist to apply “double image”, a formal concept theorised by the master of Surrealism in 1930, to sculpture. Following the death of several of his supporters and sponsors in the 1960s, Boulogne saw his commissions decrease and at the same time lost his studio on Rue d’Alésia in the Montparnasse district. However, he continued his artistic research, with Surrealism serving as his constant guide. He died in Paris in 1992.