Rodin/Bourdelle. Corps à corps

À propos

For its final stage, this unprecedented exhibition brings together Ingres Bourdelle and Auguste Rodin, each of whom was one of the most famous sculptors of their time, for the very first time

Rich with over 170 works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, photographs, and archival material, this exhibition traces the major stages of an extraordinary artistic and personal relationship. It highlights the young Bourdelle’s admiration for his master Rodin, the necessary distance he took to assert his own voice, and their later reunion as equals: a passing of the torch, in which Rodin concludes the sculptural adventure of the 19th century and Bourdelle opens that of the 20th century.

Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929) admired Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), who was twenty years his senior. Rodin, in turn, quickly recognized Bourdelle’s talent and welcomed him into his studio, where Bourdelle worked for fifteen years as a praticien, responsible for carving his marbles.

The master saw in this heir—sometimes rebellious—a “forerunner of the future.” Bourdelle wrote about Rodin, and Rodin praised Bourdelle’s works. The two men exchanged letters, works, and ideas. This relationship alone illustrates the intensity of the bond that united them, both in their careers and in their lives.

Their parallel, often overlapping trajectories deserved a major exhibition. This one presents, with unprecedented ambition and scope, both the fraternities and reciprocal influences as well as the divergences and antagonisms of these two creators, who embodied the key challenges of modernity: a rejection of naturalism and verisimilitude, a return to the sources of antiquity and raw material, expressionist modeling, the aesthetics of the fragment, hybrid forms and a poetics of assembly, reflection on the pedestal and monumentality, the autonomy of sculpture, and a striving for purity that would pave the way for abstraction.

MORE INFORMATION ON THE WEBSITE OF THE INGRES BOURDELLE MUSEUM

On loan from the Musée Rodin

This exhibition was initiated and curated by the Bourdelle Museum / Paris Musées and the musée Rodin. It is organized in collaboration with the Bourdelle Museum / Paris Musées, the La Piscine Museum in Roubaix, and the Ingres-Bourdelle Museum in Montauban.

The exhibition benefits from the exceptional support of the musée Rodin, which is lending around sixty works from its collections, and the Bourdelle Museum, which is lending nearly 70 works, including 35 sculptures.

The National Museum of Modern Art / Centre for Industrial Creation / Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Orsay, the Zadkine Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, the Museum of Fine Arts of Rouen, the Matisse Departmental Museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the Chana Orloff Workshop-Museum, the Giacometti Foundation in Paris, and the Coubertin Foundation have also generously contributed to this exhibition.

Curatorship

General Curatorship

• Ophélie Ferlier Bouat, Director of the Bourdelle Museum, Paris
• Bruno Gaudichon, Honorary Chief Curator of La Piscine – Museum of Art and Industry
• André Diligent, then Hélène Duret, Director-Curator, La Piscine – Museum of Art and Industry
• Florence Viguier-Dutheil, Director of the Ingres-Bourdelle Museum, Montauban

SCIENTIFIC Curatorship

• Ophélie Ferlier Bouat, Director of the Bourdelle Museum
• Jérôme Godeau, Project Officer to the Director, Bourdelle Museum
• Valérie Montalbetti Kervella, Head of Sculptures and Bourdelle Collections, Bourdelle Museum
• Colin Lemoine, Head of Photographs and 20th–21st Century Collections, Bourdelle Museum
• Véronique Mattiussi, Head of the Research Department, musée Rodin