Biography

Claire was born in Brussels in 1880. Little is known about her life apart from her creative life. Around 1910, she immigrated to Paris, where she studied sculpture with Josef Lambeaux. Most of the sculptures throughout her career were made in the Art Deco style. Claire created her sculptures primarily in bronze, but her most famous art items are made in the chryselephantine technique -- a combination of ivory and bronze.

Colinet organized her first exhibition in 1913 at the Salon des Artistes François.

The female figures in the sculptures of Claire Colinet are petite, muscular and dramatic. The most famous items by sculptor Claire Colinet are her Arabian dancers cast in bronze or in chryselephantine technique. Ornately shaped sculptures by Claire Colinet are mostly in Art Deco style, although their dramatic poses and illusion of movement are in the Expressionism style. She was a member of the Society of the Women Artists and Sculptors and a member of the Salon des Artistes Français since 1929.

Together with Demetre Chiparus, Claire was the main representative of the so-called theatrical trend adopted in the Art Deco sculpture. Theatrical sculptures include not only images of dancers, but also various ancient goddesses, mainly presented in vivid dynamics in the form of petrified movement.
Figurines of Colinеt sculptures had been exhibited after her death at the Paris Salon for almost thirty years. Her models were numerous odalisques; she created a whole horde of exotic dancers, jugglers and cabaret artists.

Sculptures by Claire Colinet are characterized by a certain baroque character, which distinguishes her from her colleagues who worked in the same genre: she often had torn silhouettes, very dynamic draperies, very sharp movements and traditionally gilded bronze.