The Bourdelle Museum Presents "Antoine Bourdelle ~ All Drawing"

Written by Colin Farnsworth Friday, 16 December 2011 01:29

Paris.- The Bourdelle Museum is pleased to present "Antoine Bourdelle: All Drawing" on view at the museum through January 29th 2012. Compelling and passionate, disciplined or an outlet, the daily practice and incessant drawing by Antoine Bourdelle (1861 - 1929) created a burgeoning graphic production. In this exhibition, the museum reveals the Bourdelle through the first major exhibition of drawings ever devoted to the sculptor, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Two hundred works, including many previously unpublished have been selected from among the nearly seven thousand contained in the museum's collection. Together, these trace the artist's path from 1875 to 1929, revealing, in his own words, "The essential part of the design in [his] life as an artist." The exhibition does not present the works chronologically, but instead groups them according to their nature and intent that governed their creation. It provides access keys to the approach of Bourdelle as a designer, but also to his secret garden, lighting the multiple facets of both the artist and the work, which is incredibly prolific and varied, both in terms of style, themes, and techniques (pencil, charcoal, ink, watercolor and pastel).

The exhibition also includes a number of preliminary sketches for sculptures. Bourdelle was born at Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne. He left school at the age of 13 to work as a wood carver in his father's cabinet making shop. He learned drawing with the founder of the Ingres Museum in Montauban, then sculpture at the art school in Toulouse. At the age of 24 he won a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, worked briefly in the atelier of Alexandre Falguière, then several years with Jules Dalou. In 1888 he did his first sculptures of Beethoven, producing authoritative work with an emphasis on order, the spirit of geometry, construction and invention. He became one of the pioneers of 20th century monumental sculpture. Auguste Rodin became a great admirer of his work, and by September 1893 Antoine Bourdelle joined Rodin as his assistant where he soon became a popular teacher, both there and at his own studio where many future prominent artists attended his classes, so that his influence on sculpture was considerable. During his last years, Bourdelle received several commissions for monuments and war memorials. He was a participant in the 1913 Armory Show in New York, a founder and vice-president of the Parisian Salon des Tuileries, and in 1924 became a commander of the Legion of Honor. Bourdelle's only son and student, Pierre Bourdelle (1901-1966), became an artist most active in the United States, most notably in the 1933 Cincinnati Union Terminal. Bourdelle died at Le Vésinet, near Paris, on October 1, 1929 and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.

The Musée Bourdelle is an art museum located in the 15th arrondissement at 18, rue Antoine Bourdelle, Paris, France. It is open daily, except Mondays. The nearest métro stations are Falguière and Montparnasse – Bienvenüe. The museum preserves the studio of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), and provides an example of Parisian ateliers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was Bourdelle's active studio from 1885-1929. In 1922 he began plans to turn his studio into a museum; in the early 1930s Gabriel Cognacq provided funds to purchase the studio and thus avoid dispersing the artist's remaining works. The museum was inaugurated in 1949, and expanded in 1961 by architect Henri Gautruche and again in 1992 by Christian de Portzamparc. Today the museum contains more than 500 works including marble, plaster, and bronze statues, paintings, pastels, fresco sketches, and Bourdelle's personal collection of works by artists including Eugène Carrière, Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and Auguste Rodin. It contains the original plaster casts of some of his finest works including 21 studies of Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as document archives and his copies of Greek and medieval works. A second Bourdelle garden-museum, in Égreville, was established by his heirs in the late 1960s. It hosts another 56 of his sculptures. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/musees-expos/musee-bourdelle

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~