Biography from Abby M Taylor Fine Art:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
Emile Antoine Bourdelle was one of the leaders of twentieth century
monumental sculpture and qualified by Rodin as “a pioneer of the
future”. Unlike academic sculptors and their moralizing
grandiloquence and superfluous ornamentation, Bourdelle chose to depict
rigorous structure and a powerful rhythm, likely reflective of his
peasant past. The artist's goal was to capture the whole and
recreate it, a very dissimilar approach to most of his
contemporaries. The great philosopher Henri Bergson admired his
approach and his artistry: “What strikes me as soon as I look at one of
your works is that each part seems to contain the whole. Isn't that the
mark of perfection?”
A notion central to Bourdelle's
aesthetics is the separation of the image or symbol of the work of art
from the source or object it represents, so as to arrive at a feeling
for the fleeting and corruptible nature of reality, for the sense that
life is illusory, or simply a dream. For artists like Bourdelle
and Debussy, the image or symbol of the work of art cannot be derived
from the phenomenal world, but rather must be stripped of all literary
associations, so that the emotions of the spectator can soar directly
and freely toward the supposed eternal essence, the mystery of things,
their spiritual significance, and the universal idea. Instead of
illustrating scenes from poems, art should only use very clear symbols
that do not rely on any written text. The idea can be read without
effort. They awaken the imagination of the spectator without extraneous
effort. The forms created only provide a pretext for the emotion to
expand indefinitely.
Emile-Antoine Bourdelle was initially
trained in cabinetmaking, but he decided to enter the École des
Beaux-Arts in Toulouse in 1876. He studied successively under
Alexandre Falguière, Juiles Dalou, and Auguste Rodin. He was
Rodin's assistant from 1893 to 1906. Bourdelle differed sharply
from Rodin in his preoccupation with the relation of sculpture to
architecture. Seeking his inspiration in archaic Greece and the
Gothic, he achieved his greatest success in heroic and monumental works
such as Hercules, of which there is a cast in the Metropolitan Museum; his colossal Virgin of Alsace; his bas-reliefs for the Théâtre des Champs Élysées; and his monument to Americans who died in World War I (Pointe de Grave). He is also noted for his numerous portrait heads.
Bourdelle
believed that "sculpture is the realization of an object." He strived
to follow the example of nature by creating objects that are endowed of
meaning and emotional strength. Bourdelle draws a clear
distinction between his works and objects produced by machine, which
lack emotion and do not stem from the example of nature.
The
Musee Bourdelle situated at 18, rue Antoine Bourdelle, Paris, was
created in 1949 following a donation by his wife and daughter to the
Mayor of Paris. It is located at the site where Bourdelle had his
studios. Today, several hundred of his works are kept there.
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Biography from Schiller & Bodo European Paintings:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
Emile Antoine Bourdelle, French, 1861-1929
Antoine Bourdelle was one of the prominent creators of 20th century
monumental sculpture. He was born in Montauban, the native
village of Ingres, and began his training as a young boy with the
founder of the Ingres Museum. In 1885 Bourdelle won a scholarship
to move to Paris and attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He worked in the
studio of Jules Dalou and, by 1893, was working as assistant to Rodin.
For the next fifteen years he worked as chief assistant to Rodin, whose
energetic surfaces are reflected in much of Bourdelle’s work. His
style departed from that of his master, though, in works that embrace
an elegant simplification of form and taut surface that bears a strong
relationship to the work of his contemporary Aristide Maillol. By
1910, Bourdelle was generally regarded as the outstanding sculptor of
France apart from Rodin himself. His house and studio in Paris
have been converted into the Musée Bourdelle, opened in 1961 to mark
the centenary of his birth.
Selected Museum Collections:
Buenos
Aires, Museo Nacional des Bellas Artes; Cambridge, Harvard University
Art Museums; Canberra, National Gallery of Australia; Art Institute of
Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Edinburgh, National Gallery of
Scotland; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum; London, Courtauld Institute
of Art; Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Minneapolis Institute of Arts;
Montauban, Musée Ingres; Paris, Musée Bourdelle, Musée d’Orsay; Rome,
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna; Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage
Museum; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Tokyo, National Museum of
Western Art; Washington DC, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden;
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