Figures in Movement are Portrayed in works by Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Eadweard Muybridge, Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Boccioni, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Leger and Gerhard Ritcher.

Figures In Movement Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin is generally recognized as the most important sculptor of the nineteenth century. Born to a family of modest means in 1840 and slow to gain recognition, Rodin nonetheless won five of France's largest commissions for monuments during the 1880s and 1890s. During these decades he produced grand public works and a vast oeuvre of drawings and small sculptures. By 1890 Rodin had become the most renowned sculptor in France; by 1900 he had achieved international recognition. His innovations in form and subject matter established his reputation as the first master of modern sculpture. Rodin's fame and productivity have been matched by only one artist in the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso.

Rejected by the state-sponsored art school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Rodin was one of the few self-taught French sculptors of the nineteenth century. He moved from novice to sculptor's assistant (praticien) without benefit of prolonged academic training. Rodin learned about techniques on the job and about style by studying in the galleries of the Louvre. Devoted to Greek and Roman art, he also studied the masters of the French Renaissance, Germain Pilon (1528-1590) and Pierre Puget (1620-1694). Not averse to learning from more contemporary masters, Rodin looked for guidance to François Rude (1769-1815), James Pradier (1792-1852), and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875).

Rodin's career can be divided into four phases: training and apprenticeship (1854-76), maturity (1877-89), zenith (1890-1901), and final years (1902-17). Each of these periods was characterized by a defining event. After a decade of living in poverty and working for other sculptors, in 1876 Rodin made a pilgrimage to Italy. His study of antique sculpture, Michelangelo, and other artists of the Italian Renaissance provided the necessary impetus for him to make the transition from Rodin the gifted artisan to Rodin the artist. In 1880, after his submissions to the Salon were accorded modest success, Rodin received the commission for the huge bronze doors for a proposed Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Work on the doors, now known as The Gates of Hell, coincided with Rodin's reading of Baudelaire and Dante, kindred souls who inspired his art of the next decades.

Two great exhibitions, both held in Paris, bracket the height of Rodin's career: the 1889 exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit, which he shared with Claude Monet; and the grand retrospective that he installed in his own pavilion on the pont d'Alma for the Universal Exposition of 1900. The Georges Petit exhibition sealed Rodin's position as France's premier sculptor and opened doors to collections and museums around the world. After the close of the Universal Exposition in 1901, Rodin reerected his pavilion beside his villa-studio in Meudon. This first Musée Rodin, the pavilion was the artist's last completed public project; it became a perpetual monument and salesroom for him. He had become a living legend. Great commercial success and modest innovation marked Rodin's final years, ...