Cast Iron Fireback with Horses, Signed Raina, Foundry Stern, circa 1970

This cast iron fireback presents two horses in a composition of remarkable graphic vitality — one standing with calm authority, the other caught in the energy of movement, their forms rendered in an expressive linear style that evokes, unmistakably, the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux and Pech Merle. The drawing is fluid and confident, with none of the laboured precision of academic animalier sculpture; instead, the artist Raina has captured the essential gesture of each animal in a few sweeping strokes, trusting the raw surface of the cast iron to complete the effect with its characteristic dark granularity.

The debt to prehistoric art — so central to the aesthetic of the French postwar avant-garde — is both explicit and deeply considered. The discovery of Lascaux in 1940 had a transformative effect on the visual culture of mid-century France, validating a directness and expressiveness in figurative art that the academic tradition had long suppressed. Artists working in the decades that followed, from the sculptors of the Nouveau Réalisme to the ceramicists and ferroniers of provincial ateliers, returned repeatedly to the cave painting vocabulary as a source of authenticity and vitality. Raina’s horses on this fireback belong squarely within that lineage.

The piece was cast by the Fonderie Stern, the distinguished Parisian foundry responsible for several of the most notable firebacks of the postwar French decorative arts — including works by Robert Lucas and, in this collection, the harvest nude attributed to M. Quellier. The Stern stamp on this piece carries considerable contextual weight, placing it within a known tradition of quality applied art production. The combination of the Raina signature and the Stern foundry mark offers the strongest possible guarantee of the authenticity and quality of the piece.

At fifty-nine and a half centimetres wide and fifty and a half centimetres tall, this fireback is of generous size appropriate for a substantial hearth. The relief is shallow but clearly defined, the cast iron presenting a warm dark patina throughout. An evocative and artistically significant piece well suited to any interior with a sensibility for expressive primitive art.