| Biography |  |  |
 |
In the Salon of 1877 he exhibited a nude male figure, The Age of Bronze (1876; Paris). It was both extravagantly praised and condemned; his critics unjustly accused him of having made a cast from life. From the furor Rodin gained the active support and patronage of Turquet, undersecretary of fine arts. His Age of Bronze and St. John (1878) were purchased for the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris.
The government gave him a studio in Paris, where he worked the rest of his life with growing fame. From 1880 on Rodin worked intermittently on studies for a huge bronze door for the Musée des Arts décoratifs. It was inspired by Dante's Inferno and was to be called the Gate of Hell. He never finished it. Among the 186 figures intended for it are Adam and Eve (1881; Metropolitan Mus.), The Thinker (1879-1900), and La Belle Heaulmière (both: Paris). These, together with his group The Burghers of Calais (Calais), completed in 1894, are among his most famous creations.
Other ambitious works are his monuments to Balzac (1897; Paris) and to Victor Hugo (1909; Paris). Rodin is also known for his drawings, his many fine portrait busts, and his figures and groups in marble, such as Ugolino (1882), Danaïd (1885), The Kiss (1886), and The Hand of God (1897-98) in the Rodin Museum, Paris, and Pygmalion and Galatea and The Bather in the Metropolitan Museum, N.Y.C. He is best represented in the Rodin museums of Paris and Philadelphia, but fine examples of his work are included in many public collections throughout the world.
Rodin's work is generally considered the most important contribution to sculpture of his century, although some recent critical opinion has found his allegorical works pretentious. Realistic in many respects, it is nevertheless imbued with a profound, romantic poetry. The Gothic, the dance, and the works of Dante, Baudelaire, and Michelangelo were major sources of inspiration. Rodin considered his work completed when it expressed his idea, and as a result his sculpture is varied in technique; some is polished, some is gouged and scraped, and some seems scarcely to have emerged from the rough stone. He worked long over his more important works, returning to them again and again but without injuring their essential vitality.
(cf : Wikipedia)
| Filiation | | |
Amant de Camille Claudel
| Connections | | |
Worked wirh Jean Alexandre Pézieux, Paul Jeanneney, Aristide Rousaud, Léon Charles Fourquet, Jean Turcan, Séraphin Soudbinine, Emmanuel Dolivet, François Curillon, Louis Dominique Mathet, F. Ganier, Antoine Bourdelle, Victor Peter, Jean Escoula et François Pompon
| Achievement | | |
Auteuil-Passy-Foch
Artist
Bridgestone Museum of Art
Artist
Fondation Beyeler
Artist
House of Victor Hugo
Artist
 See all the works (411)
| Work(s)' related | | |
Art Institute of Chicago
In the style of
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Model
Musée Rodin de Philadelphie
Model
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Model
The Rodin Museum
Model
See all the works (32)
| Place(s) related | | |
| Related article(s) | | |
La Divine Comédie de Dante 
Florence deviendra l'une des plus puissantes cités italiennes au XIIIème siècle. La bourgeoisie et les artisans feront alliance pour écarter les familles aristocratiques des affaires communales en 1250.
|
|
