ABSTRACT
Mabel Gardner went to Paris towards the end of World War I to volunteer as a nurse. For a sculptor trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and born into a prominent Providence, RI. family, Paris symbolised all the achievements of the artistic tradition, and yet her mission was one of charity. Refusing the dichotomy between art and service, this compelling artist converted to Catholicism after the war and became involved with the artists of the Ateliers de l’art sacré. Founded by Maurice Denis and Georges Desvaillières in 1919, it aimed to train artists in the medieval workshop tradition and provide sacred art to the devastated churches after World War I. Living in France following the end of the war, Gardner’s work was in constant dialogue with the destructive forces of that war through the prism of her faith. Her obsessive carvings of the Virgin aimed to revivify religious sculpture through simplified form and rough facture and to address the anomie of modern life by their placement in churches built for ordinary people. She showed widely in the 1920s and 1930s and at the large 1938 exhibition of L’Art sacré organised by Joseph Pichard at the Musée des Arts décoratifs she was singled out by Claude Roger-Marx as being the most memorable of the sculptors.
