Antoine Bourdelle
1861–1929 · France · Art Deco, Beaux-Arts, Modern sculpture
The story
For about 15 years Antoine Bourdelle worked at the side of Auguste Rodin, the towering sculptor of the age, first as a hired carver and then as a trusted assistant. He revered Rodin, but he did not want to make Rodin's kind of sculpture, all flickering surface and inner turmoil.
Bourdelle pulled the other way, toward clarity, weight, and architecture. His 'Herakles the Archer' braces a bent bow against the rock with a coiled, geometric force, more like a building than a nervous body. He decorated the front of the new Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris with severe reliefs of dancers, drawing on archaic Greek art.
He was also a generous, famous teacher whose Paris studio drew students from everywhere, among them the young Alberto Giacometti. When Bourdelle died in 1929, that studio and its contents were kept intact, and it still stands in Montparnasse as a museum of his work.
