ARISTIDE MAILLOL 1861-1944

Mostly known for his sculptures, Aristide Maillol started his career as a painter and upholsterer. Formed by Jean-Léon Gérôme at Paris's school of Fine Arts he first produced artworks belonging to the Nabi movement. In parallel, he practiced upholstery, which he was forced to abandon at the age of forty due to an eye problem. From that moment on, he dedicated himself to sculpture. Even though he was close to Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle who supported him since his beginnings, Aristide Maillol produced sculptures in a very personal style. Throughout his career, his main topic remained the naked feminine figure. In 1905, his sculpture of a woman entitled La Méditerrannée  presented at the Salon d'Automne received great success. Simplicity, lack of details, excessive expression and round modeling are characteristics that distinguished Maillol's work from his contemporaries. The sucess of this sculpture ensured him private and public commands for the rest of his life. These ones are now presented in the museum dedicated to his production that opened in 1905 in the seventh district of Paris, as well as in the Tuileries Garden, the Musée d'Orsay, French provinces (Perpignan, Banyuls sur Mer) and internationally renowned museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During his lifetime, numerous exhibitions were dedicated to his production. In 1933, two retrospectives of his work took place one in New York and one in Basel. In 1937 his sculptures entered the freshly opened Musée d'Art Moderne of Paris.