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GERMAN

Maillol, Aristide
born: 1861 Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
died: 1944 Banyuls-sur-Mer

Initially a painter, Aristide Maillol began working in sculpture shortly before 1900, when Auguste Rodin's style largely determined the taste of the day. Maillol's modest beginnings contained no indication of the key position he would soon assume as an antipode to Rodin. After several applications were turned down, Maillol was finally accepted in 

1885 into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 

In 1893 he entered the circle of the Nabis, followers of Gauguin, and began designing tapestries that were shown at exhibitions. In parallel Maillol did Symbolistic paintings, ceramic works, and a few figurines. After the turn of the century he turned entirely to sculpture, now practicing a style which recurred to the classical harmony of earlier periods. Maillol's works, which were initially recognized in Germany and only later in France, were first publicly exhibited after the First World War. One of the artist's early works is Female Standing Bather 

(1900) in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. It is characterized by an emphasis on the vertical, a simple, natural pose, and quiet, self contained volumes. Maillol concentrates on pure, full form, developed from the masses of the figure in a tectonic, static sense. "I search for architecture and forms in space," Maillol once said. "Sculpture is archi- tecture, the equilibrium ofthe masses is a dispensation of taste. This architectural aspect is difficult to achieve. I try to arrive at it in the way Polycleitus succeeded in doing. I always begin with a geometric shape - a rectangle, rhombus, triangle - because these are the forms which assert them- selves best in space." Maillol's ideal was early Greek sculpture of the fifth century B. C. - the bronzes rather than the pieces in white marble. In Ledo 

(c. 1902) he dispensed with the swan in the myth and concentrated instead entirely on the expression and gesture of the girl, frightened and recoiling from the swan's advances. The head, turned aside and down, and the raised left hand are justified in their own right, quite apart from the subject depicted. They are purely expressive elements of a vital approach to the human body marked by a calculated tension between calm and motion, precise detail and self contained volumes. Although his choice of motifs was limited - Maillol devoted himself almost exclusively to the female nude - the southern French sculptor revived the Mediterranean tradition in sculpture to new, pulsating life, and set his naturalism against the northern Frenchman Rodin's dissolution of the human form. The (arge sculpture !le de Frcrnce 

(1925) illustrates Maillol's style on the scale af life. It is the figure of a shapely young woman, depicted in the act of stepping forward. The surface texture is soft and flowing, and anatomical details are glossed over. The scarf the girl holds behind her back links the hands and arms, giving the impression of an unbreakable bond which counteracts the force of the torso, arched forward as tense as a drawn bow. The female figure is raised to the level of a type or ideal, the title, too, indicating an allegorical reference to femininity and Mother Earth. This sensuous country girl recalls the full-blooded women of Paul Gauguin, as well as the nudes painted and sculpted by Maillol's friend, Auguste Renoir, in his late period. Yet in Maillol the southern French type of female beauty predominated.

Kunst- Ausstellung / ART EXHIBITION Maurice Denis

Kunst-Ausstellung / ART EXHIBITION Aristide Maillol