RODIN, AUGUSTE. - Sculptor, b. in Paris on 12 Nov. 1840, d. at Meudon on 7 Nov. 1917, one of the most remarkable personalities of modern French art.
A contemporary of the major painters of the Impressionist group (v.), R., continuing along the path already begun by Rude and continued by Carpeaux toward a pronounced pictorialism in the modeling of plastic masses, arrives at a rapid, sometimes merely allusive rendering of forms in movement. R. thereby obtains effects of surprising effectiveness, rendering the multiplicity of expressions and feelings. Nevertheless a certain emphasis, with which figurations dense with meaning—even literary meaning—are imbued, often makes it clear how his very modeling, with violent tumultuous contrasts of shadow and light, is sometimes related to rhetorical poses of a whimsical, excessive, theatrical temperament, and certainly too sure of itself. It is nevertheless undeniable that R. commands a highly personal technique that crosses the boundaries of virtuosity. For this reason too his personality as a truly learned, robust and extremely skilled artist attracted some of the greatest artistic personalities of his time, on the formation of whose taste he decisively exerted an influence.
Among his early works marked by a personal style is the mask of the Homme au nez cassé, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1864, arousing a most violent scandal. A scandal that was to be renewed thirty-four years later when, amid the most heated polemics, the sketch of the monument to Balzac was exhibited—for us one of R.'s best works, among which there are also, instead of the too famous group of the Burghers of Calais, of the Gate of Hell, or of the Thinker itself, replicated several times and much imitated, some exceptionally beautiful portraits and a few drawings.
Bibliography2 works
Emilio Lavagnino