In conjunction with the exhibition Capturing the model. Rodin 300 drawings 1890-1917, to be held at the Musée Rodin between November 18th 2011, and April 1st 2012, a selection of about thirty drawings by Paul-Armand Gette will be presented on the first floor of the Hôtel Biron.
Since 1970, Paul-Armand Gette has developed a singular body of work, fed by a constant obsession with two themes : that of landscapes and the idea of nature and that of the study of the model. They are expressed through the feminine body and its possible metamorphoses, finding their perfect incarnation in the figure of the nymph, this nature-woman the artist liberally derives from Greek and Roman mythology. Thus, over the years, Paul-Armand Gette has constructed a hedonistic and pagan world inhabited by his favorite goddesses : Artemis, Aphrodite, and their nymphs.
« In short, whether Nymph or goddess of a superior status, both of them suit me very well and provide me with a wide variety of subjects, whether of a plastic nature or in terms of reflection, since I am in love with the nymph in every sense of the word. Divinities that haunt the most pleasant places, from the small lips of the feminine sex to the intermediary stage between larva and imago, or the most beautiful flower existing in still waters […], so dear to Claude Monet, I shall be able to associate them, and even to slide from one to the other — in short, to practice the art of the overflowing.»
Through the mythological figures of Artemis and her nymphs, this relationship to the model and to the feminine body — with which Rodin was equally absorbed — constitutes the thread of continuity of this exhibition.
General Commissioner of the exhibition: Dominique Viéville, General Curator of Cultural Heritage, Director of the musée Rodin.
Commissioners of the exhibition: Noëlle Chabert, Chief Curator of Cultural Heritage, in charge of the development service.
Amélie Lavin, Curator of Cultural Heritage, in charge of the coordination of exhibitions and of contemporary art.
Bulletin in French and in English
