Rilke and the arts

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2025
Paris, musée Rodin, Léonce Bénédite auditorium
LIVE ONLINE BROADCAST

In partnership with the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the DFK German Center for Art History, Paris

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is regarded as the inventor of the ‘Dinggedicht’ [poem-thing] and an author for whom the visual had a formative effect. Secretary to Auguste Rodin, he also was an amateur draughtsman both in his youth and later as an adult. His cosmopolitan social network showed him to be in tune with the art of his time. His stay in Prague allowed him to forge long-term contact with many artists, such as the painter and graphic artist Emil Orlik, who was one of his closest friends. He studied Italian Renaissance painting with the Munich architect August Endell in 1897. Heinrich Vogeler invited him to Worpswede, where he met Otto Modersohn, Paula Becker, and his future wife Clara Westhoff, among others, who introduced him to the Parisian art scene at the turn of the century. In close contact with the Swedish painter Ernst Norlind, he also admired the paintings of the Danish Symbolist Vilhelm Hammershøi. Together with Mathilde Vollmoeller, he made a veritable pilgrimage to the 1907 Salon d'Automne in Paris for the retrospective of Paul Cézanne’s work. Hedwig Jaenichen-Woermann and many other women artists belonged to his close circle of friends. Finally, Baladine Klossowska, the sister of the painter Eugen Spiro, was his last lover, and Rilke even supported her son, the painter Balthus, from an early age, dedicating a publication to him, his Letters to a Young Painter.

How do the visual arts and literature interact in Rilke's life and work, and to what extent did the poet influence the visual arts? The author’s estate, acquired by the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach in December 2022, contains numerous previously unknown letters and notebooks by Rilke. Together with the archives held at the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern, and the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Geneva, it shows the extent to which Rilke influenced the development of modern aesthetics. 

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth, followed by the centenary of his death in 2026, which will be celebrated by the exhibition “Rodin according to Rilke” at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny (Switzerland), this symposium invites international scholars to reevaluate Rilke's productive relationship with the visual arts and to question the role of the poet in the emergence of a particularly modern aesthetic.

Research committee

• Amélie Simier, Conservatrice générale du patrimoine, directrice du musée Rodin
• Peter Geimer, Directeur du DFK Paris - Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art
• Anna Kinder, Responsable du service de la Recherche, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
• Véronique Mattiussi, Cheffe du service de la Recherche au musée Rodin
• Franck Joubin, Documentaliste, chargé des colloques au musée Rodin

Program

Visual : George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Rainer Maria Rilke under the portico of the Alma Pavilion, rebuilt in Meudon, c. 1906 (detail), platinotype, H. 10,7 ; L. 8,2 cm, Paris musée Rodin, Ph.01170 © musée Rodin