RODIN / BOURDELLE. BODY TO BODY
Exhibition from 1st March to 1st June 2025
Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) admired Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), who was 20 years his senior. Rodin gave his support to Bourdelle. Bourdelle was Rodin’s skilled assistant, carving marble for him and completing practical tasks for him. Rodin was Bourdelle’s best man at his wedding. Bourdelle painted a portrait of this master, this “old Faun” as he liked to call him. In this heir, who was often unruly, the master saw a “pioneer of the future”. Bourdelle wrote about Rodin. Rodin praised Bourdelle’s works. The two men exchanged letters and works, as well as ideas.
This chiastic relationship tells us all we need to know about the intensity of the bonds that united these two artists whose careers, as well as their lives, were intertwined. What’s more, they were associated with personalities who, from Camille Claudel to Isadora Duncan, crossed paths with both of them. Given how their respective journeys ran along parallel lines, which often merged with each other, it made sense to devote a major exhibition to them. Through its unprecedented ambition and scope, the showdown will finally demonstrate the connections and reciprocities as well as the differences of opinion and antagonisms of two creators, two artistic worlds, thereby heralding the major challenges of modernity, i.e. the rejection of naturalism and verisimilitude, a return to the origins of antiquity and raw materials, the expressionism of modelling, the aesthetics of the fragment, hybridisation and the poetics of the assembly, a reflection on the foundation and the monumental, the autonomy of sculpture and the desire for refinement which will open the way to abstraction.
Composed of more than 170 works (sculptures and drawings as well as photographs and archives), this confrontation between two great masters of sculpture is a unique opportunity to explore almost 50 years of creation – shared or intersecting – while also exploring their heritage among artists, including Chana Orloff, Ossip Zadkine and Germaine Richier, who would start a new chapter in the history of modern sculpture following in their footsteps.
This exhibition was initiated and designed by the Bourdelle Museum/Paris Musées and the Rodin Museum. It was organised as part of a collaboration between the Bourdelle/Paris Musées museum, the La Piscine museum in Roubaix and the Ingres Bourdelle museum in Montauban. It will be presented from 2 October 2024 to 2 February 2025 at the Bourdelle Museum and, after La Piscine, at the Ingres Bourdelle Museum in Montauban from 27 June to 19 October 2025.
The exhibition benefits from the exceptional support of the Rodin Museum, which is loaning around 60 works from its collections. The national museum of modern art/centre of industrial creation/Pompidou Centre, the Orsay Museum, the Zadkine Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, the Museum of Fine Arts of Rouen, the Matisse departmental museum of Cateau-Cambrésis, the Chana Orloff workshop-museum, the Giacometti Foundation in Paris and the Coubertin Foundation have also generously supported this exhibition.
General Curator
Ophélie Ferlier-Bouat, director of the Bourdelle Museum in Paris
Florence Viguier-Dutheil, director of the Ingres Bourdelle museum in Montauban
Bruno Gaudichon, honorary head curator of La Piscine – André Diligent museum of art and industry
Hélène Duret, director-curator, La Piscine – André Diligent museum of art and industry
Adèle Taillefait, curator of the Fine Art collections, La Piscine – André Diligent museum of art and industry
Scientific curator
Ophélie Ferlier-Bouat, director of the Bourdelle Museum
Jérôme Godeau, project manager for the director, Bourdelle Museum
Valérie Montalbetti-Kervella, head of sculptures and collections, Bourdelle Museum
Colin Lemoine, head of photographs and collections of the 20th and 21st centuries, Bourdelle Museum
Véronique Mattiussi, head of research, scientific manager of the historical collection, Rodin Museum
A catalogue published by Paris Musées (Museums of the City of Paris) will accompany the exhibition.
The Roubaix-based scenography was created thanks to the generous support of Tollens paint
Caption: Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Adam, 1880. Bronze. 197 x 76 x 77 cm. Paris, Rodin Museum © Rodin Museum – photo Christian Baraja.
Preview on Friday 7 March 2025 from 6pm.
