Capturing the Model Rodin 300 drawings 1890-1917

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Capturing the Model
Rodin 300 drawings 1890-1917
18 November 2011- 1st April 2012
We know Rodin the sculptor, but do we know Rodin the creator of
drawings? This exhibition spectacularly presents a collection of 300
drawings of his last thirty years. During the last part of his life, drawing
was the artist’s predominant form of expression.
Femme nue agenouillée, de dos, le
vêtement relevé jusqu'à la taille
(Nude Woman Kneeling, from the back,
garment raised to the waist)
Lead pencil and watercolor
Collection musée Rodin
At over 60, Rodin embarked upon a true career as a drawer. He had
always drawn, but the drawings that date from after 1890 can be
considered the last manifestation of his genius. Drawing every day from a
live model, his passion resulted in a collection of nearly 7,000 pages,
brought together almost in its entirety at the Musée Rodin. Starting in
1903, the museum organized several exhibitions devoted exclusively
to the body of his works in drawing. The Musée Rodin’s ambition is to
reconnect with the richness and the breadth of these exhibitions, allowing
the public to discover this little-known aspect of his talent.
Through the reconstitution of the major identifiable series (little drawings
in ink and watercolor from the years 1890-1895; the Psyches; the Women
in Peignoir; the Cambodian Dancers; the shaped and shaded drawings
of around 1910; the last drawings, splashed with color, to name just a
few), certain themes and characteristics of the artist’s drawings are
explored, such as the practice of drawing and the importance of the form
that is changed, corrected, erased, cut up, folded in two; the mastery of
the continuous and synthetic line; the relationship of body to space; and,
finally, the femme fatal or the sexual bodies.
Torture
Lead pencil and watercolor
Collection musée Rodin
The proposed sequence of the exhibition will end with Rodin’s final
drawings, which demonstrate the extraordinary tension the artist
introduced between the naturalism of a drawing, capturing a gesture, a
movement in all its immediacy, and the increasing independence of line
and color. Rodin’s freedom in drawing contributed to opening an
immense space for the artists of the 20th century. The true mission of the
exhibition is to make the viewer sense this liberty.
On the occasion of this exhibition, the museum will also present a
selection of works drawn by the artist Paul-Armand Gette, whose set of
themes surrounding the feminine body echo Rodin’s drawings, on the first
floor of the Hôtel Biron.
General Commissioner of the exhibition
Dominique Viéville, General Curator of Cultural Heritage, Director of
the musée Rodin
Commissioner of the exhibition
Nadine Lehni, Chief Curator of Cultural Heritage of the Musée Rodin
Catalogue Rodin 300 dessins 1890-1917, joint publication with Editions Nicolas
Chaudun, 256 pp., 39 euros
Bulletin in French and in English
Lecture visits every Sunday at 3:00 PM
Training for teachers
Seminars Thursday, 8 March and Friday, 9 March
November (9:30 AM – 12:30 PM)
Musée Rodin, 79 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris. Tél : 01 44 18 61 10
www.musee-rodin.fr
Femme debout au vêtement
entrouvert tel un pyjama
(Woman Standing with pyjamalike garment half-open)
Lead pencil, gouache, and
watercolor Collection musée
Rodin
Press contact
Claudine Colin Communication
Ingrid Cadoret
[email protected]
Tél : 01 42 72 60 01