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Auguste Rodin
(November 12, 1840?November 17, 1917) was the preeminent French
sculptor of the modern era. He played a pivotal role in the art of
the late nineteenth century, both excelling at and rebelling
against the Beaux-arts tradition. His unique, virtuoso ability to
organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface set him
apart from the
figure sculpture traditions before and since his time.
Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the
son of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, a police official. He
was largely self-educated,[1] and began to draw at ten. At 14, he
attended "la Petite École", a school specializing in art and
mathematics. There, he studied drawing with Horace Lecoq de
Boisbaudran and painting with Belloc.
Many of his best-known sculptures, such as The Thinker , The Three
Shades , and The Kiss were designed as figures for this monumental
composition of eternal passion and punishment, and only later
presented as separate and independent works. Other well-known works
are the Ugolino group, Fugitive Love, The Falling Man, The Sirens,
Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone, Damned Women, The Standing
Fauness, The Kneeling Fauness, The Martyr.
Through his method of marcottage (layering), he used the same
sculptural elements time and time again, under different names and
in different combinations.
Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred
to work with amateur models, street performers, acrobats, strong
men and dancers. In his atelier, the models walked around freely
while the sculptor made quick sketches in clay, which were later
fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and forged into bronze or carved in
marble. Rodin was fascinated by dance and spontaneous movement; his
John the Baptist shows a walking preacher, displaying two phases of
the same stride simultaneously.
As France's best-known sculptor, he had a large staff of pupils,
craftsmen, and stone cutters working for him, including the Czech
sculptors Josef Maratka and Joseph Kratina. He created a number of
society portrait busts, especially for wealthy American collectors,
and began presenting fragmentary sculptures, which in his opinion
contained the essence of his artistic statement, like Meditation
without Arms, Iris, Messenger of the Gods or The Walking Man.
Rodin died at age 77, at his Meudon villa on the outskirts of Paris
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