Aristide Maillol

Aristide Maillol
Aristide Maillol (1925), in a photograph by Alfred Kuhn
Born	Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol (1861-12-08)December 8, 1861 Banyuls-sur-Mer,Roussillon
Died	September 27, 1944(1944-09-27)(aged 82) Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roussillon
Nationality	French
Education	École des Beaux-Arts
Known for	Sculpture,painting

Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol(French:[mɑjɔl];December 8, 1861 – September 27, 1944) was a Frenchsculptor,painter,andprintmaker.

Biography

Maillol,Bas Relief,terracotta. Exhibited at the 1913Armory Show,New York, Chicago, Boston. Catalogue image (no. 110)

Maillol was born inBanyuls-sur-Mer,Roussillon.He decided at an early age to become a painter, and moved toParisin 1881 to study art.After several applications and several years of living in poverty, his enrollment in theÉcole des Beaux-Artswas accepted in 1885, and he studied there underJean-Léon GérômeandAlexandre Cabanel.His early paintings show the influence of his contemporariesPierre Puvis de ChavannesandPaul Gauguin.

Gauguin encouraged his growing interest in decorative art, an interest that led Maillol to take uptapestrydesign. In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and aesthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France. He began making smallterracottasculptures in 1895, and within a few years his concentration on sculpture led to the abandonment of his work in tapestry.

Maillol,The River,bronze, 1938–1943, at theTuileries GardeninParis

In July 1896, Maillol married Clotilde Narcis, one of his employees at his tapestry workshop. Their only son, Lucian, was born that October.

Maillol's first major sculpture,A Seated Woman,was modeled after his wife. The first version (in theMuseum of Modern Art,New York) was completed in 1902, and renamedLa Méditerranée.Maillol, believing that "art does not lie in the copying of nature", produced a second, less naturalistic version in 1905.In 1902, the art dealerAmbroise Vollardprovided Maillol with his first exhibition.

Aircast 1938,Kröller-Müller Museum

The subject of nearly all of Maillol's mature work is the female body, treated with aclassicalemphasis on stable forms. The figurative style of his large bronzes is perceived as an important precursor to the greater simplifications ofHenry Moore,and his serene classicism set a standard for European (and American) figure sculpture until the end ofWorld War II.

Josep Plasaid of Maillol, "These archaic ideas, Greek, were the great novelty Maillol brought into the tendency of modern sculpture. What you need to love from the ancients is not the antiquity, it is the sense of permanent, renewed novelty, that is due to the nature and reason."

His important public commissions include a 1912 commission for a monument toCézanne,as well as numerous war memorials commissioned afterWorld War I.

Maillol served as a juror withFlorence Meyer Blumenthalin awarding thePrix Blumenthal(1919–1954) a grant awarded to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.

He made a series ofwoodcutillustrations for an edition ofVergil'sEcloguespublished byHarry Graf Kesslerin 1926–27. He also illustratedDaphnis and ChloebyLongus(1937) andChansons pour ellebyPaul Verlaine(1939).

He died in Banyuls at the age of eighty-two, in an automobile accident. While driving home during a thunderstorm, the car in which he was a passenger skidded off the road and rolled over. A large collection of Maillol's work is maintained at theMusée MaillolinParis,which was established byDina Vierny,Maillol's model and platonic companion during the last 10 years of his life. His home a few kilometers outside Banyuls, also the site of his final resting place, has been turned into a museum, theMusée Maillol Banyuls-sur-Mer,where a number of his works and sketches are displayed.

Three of his bronzes grace the grand staircase of theMetropolitan Opera Housein New York City:Summer(1910–11),Venus Without Arms(1920), andKneeling Woman: Monument to Debussy(1950–55). The third, the artist's only reference to music, is a copy of an original created for the French city ofSaint-Germain-en-Laye,Claude Debussy's birthplace.

Nazi-looted art

During theGerman occupation of France,dozens of artworks by Maillol were seized by the Nazi looting organization known as the E.R.R. orReichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce.TheDatabase of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paumelists thirty artworks by Maillol.The German Lost Art Foundation database lists 33 entries for Maillol.TheGerman Historical Museum's database for artworks recovered by the Allies at theMunich Central Collecting Pointhas 13 items related to Maillol.Maillol's sculpture "Head of Flora" was found in the stash ofCornelius Gurlitt,son of Hitler's art dealerHildebrand Gurlitttogether with lithographs,drawings and paintings.

A photograph from May 24, 1946 shows "Six men, members of theMonuments, Fine Arts & Archivessection of the military, prepare Aristide Maillol's sculptureBaigneuse à la draperie,looted during World War II for transport to France. Sculpture is labeled with sign: Wiesbaden, no. 31. "

Jewish art collectors whose artworks by Maillol were looted by Nazis includeHugo Simon,Alfred Flechtheimand many others.

Aristide Maillol,The Night,(1902),Stuttgart

Works

• Mme Henry Clemens van de Velde (c. 1899)
• The Mediterranean (1902-05)
• Action in Chains(1905)
• Flora, Nude(1910)
• L'Été sans bras(1911)
• Bathing Woman with Raised Arms(1921)
• Nymph(1930)
• The Mountain(1937)
• L'Air(1938)
• The River(1938–43)
• Harmonie(1944)

Sources

• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, "Aristide Maillol, 1861-1944", New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1975.
• Frèches-Thory, Claire, & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, ed.:Die Nabis: Propheten der Moderne,Kunsthaus Zürich & Grand Palais, Paris & Prestel, Munich 1993ISBN3-7913-1969-8(German), (French)

Further reading

• Lorquin, Bertrand (1995).Maillol.Skira.ISBN9780500974179.
• Rewald, John(1951).The Woodcuts of Aristide Maillol.New York: Pantheon Books.

External links

• Works by or about Aristide MaillolatInternet Archive
• Masters of 20th Century Figure Sculpture
• Maillol Museum
• Aristide Maillolin American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
• Aristide Maillol in Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg:Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume