A fresh look at Rodin, one of the greatest sculptors of all time, not only thanks to his ability to capture the emotional and psychological complexity of human beings, but also his having profoundly renewed the very language of sculpture, in articular demonstrating a passion for the act of creating rather than completing a work of art. August Rodin profoundly revitalized the very language of sculpture with his passion for the creative act. The ongoing interplay of accidents and chance in his work, his figures fragmented only to be reconstituted through this ingenious “cobbling together,” enabled him to interpolate his work in an endless flow of creation. The topic of metamorphosis is directly related to his work, without model or witness, in the privacy of his studio. Fragile plasters as well as bronzes, marble figures, drawings, watercolours, and photographs all attest to this creative ferment. But “studio” must also be understood as the small art community that worked for and around the Master. It consisted of practitioners of specific trades to whom we owe the transformation of one material to another, one dimension to another, under his attentive guidance. This catalogue sheds light on the various
processes of reprise and transformation and takes stock of the sculptor’s prodigious creativity. It also features masterpieces like the 200 or so figures fleeing The Gates of Hell, a work Rodin was to draw from for the rest of his career, and The Walking Man