Charles Malfray was a French sculptor who moved to Paris in 1904 and joined the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He witnessed the horrors of World War I and created his first wooden version of Silence, which represented the idea of anguish and suffocation of the man cornered by the horror of war. Malfray published two versions in terracotta and bronze, one with rock and the second without rock, from the model he sculpted in clay in 1918. Silence is an allegorical portrait of the poilus of 14-18 and is part of the artist's body of work on the theme of war. Malfray's work on war themes differs from other works as the symbolic prevails, to suggest violence and loneliness more than to figure them. He enlarged Le Silence to different s...