Sculptors dream with their hands. And, since dream images are never static, the dreams of sculptors are best expressed in the representation of movement. This is the case with Edmée Guyon. Each of her sculptures is the synthesis of a movement which combines physical form and spiritual aspiration.

This form sometimes springs from a subject in nature often suggestive of space - the crest of a wave, a seagull in full flight, a cloud shaped by the wind. These are familiar sights for Edmée Guyon whose favourite retreat faces the open sea. But, for her, they are not so much models as determinative signs which she takes (or which take her) far from their tangible reality. Abstraction begins with their metamorphosis in the transition to significant form, which suggests the life of the spirit already implicit in the original movement.

Though an intellectual operation, abstraction in art takes on a new dimension when it goes beyond mere aesthetic research to achieve the expression of an idea, which only uses the object in order to transcend it. This is what marks the fundamental character of Edmée Guyon's work. The sharpness of a spurting line, the gracefulness of a curve, and a rigorous equilibrium, reveal a regard for purity, a generous sense of offering, a dream of light and happiness, and, above all, a spiritual impetus which her hands impart to volumes and surfaces that often - thanks to polished bronze - become radiant as the sun.

Whether the material she uses be malleable like plaster and clay, or hard like marble, what she transmits to us with communicative fervour, via the forms born of her imagination, is what lives within her as the driving force of her creative power: the ardent vibration of an inner voice which resembles a hymn to life.

Jean Selz. 

Preface for the Paris Autumn Festival, 1991.( Translated by R.McDougall )