Auguste Rodin
1840-1917 - the most important sculptor of the transitional period between the 19th to the 20th-century.
François-Auguste-René Rodin is considered a brilliant innovator of sculpture and ranks alongside Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Cellini and Canova as one of the greatest sculptors of all time. His sculptural oeuvre is so extensive that no complete catalogue of his works has yet appeared. It would certainly cover several hundred pages.
Because he had been rejected three times by the Paris School of Art, Rodin studied at the School of Applied Arts.
Rodin was an ardent admirer of beauty. He was mesmerised by the human body, which he immortalised again and again in his "vérité fugitive", the fleeting moment: lively, vibrant beauty that took shape under his creative hands. Whatever Rodin created with his hands radiated tremendous vitality and untamed power.
His sculptures, with their multiply broken surfaces, ushered in a new era of sculpture. His sculptures, with their multiply broken surfaces, ushered in a new era in sculpture. The genius of Rodin's modern stylistic idiom, which was expressed using elements of Impressionism, abandoned the monument-like pose of the academic sculpture and brought emotional states in dynamic surfaces to life, had yet to be recognised. "Boldness of light - modesty of the shadow" - Rodin composed a dialogue of rises and falls onto the "skin" of his sculptures. Flickering highlights and mysterious shadows animate his figures and bring them to life: "Sculpture is the art of representing forms through the shift of light and shadow."
