More than 120 Works of Art by Aristide Maillol a Retrospective at La Pedrera in Barcelona

BARCELONA.- La Pedrera inaugurated an exhibition of more than 120 works of art by French artist Aristide Maillol. Maillol was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roussillon. He decided at an early age to become a painter, and moved to Paris in 1881 to study art. After several applications, his enrollment in the École des Beaux-Arts was accepted in 1885, and he studied there under Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. His early paintings show the influence of his contemporaries Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin. His important public commissions include a 1912 commission for a monument to Cézanne, as well as numerous war memorials commissioned after World War I.

Gauguin encouraged his growing interest in decorative art, an interest that led Maillol to take up tapestry design. In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and aesthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France. He began making small terracotta sculptures in 1895, and within a few years his concentration on sculpture led to the abandonment of his work in tapestry.

The subject of nearly all of Maillol’s mature work is the female body, treated with a classical emphasis on stable forms. The figurative style of his large bronzes is perceived as an important precursor to the greater simplifications of Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti, and his serene classicism set a standard for European (and American) figure sculpture until the end of World War II.

He died in Banyuls at the age of eighty-three, in an automobile accident. While driving home during a thunderstorm, the car in which he was a passenger skidded off the road and rolled over. A large collection of Maillol’s work is maintained at the Musée Maillol in Paris, which was established by Dina Vierny, Maillol’s model and platonic companion during the last 10 years of his life. His home a few kilometers outside Banyuls, also the site of his final resting place, has been turned into a museum where a number of his works and sketches are displayed.

Three of his bronzes grace the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City: “Summer” (1910-11), “Venus Without Arms” (1920), and “Kneeling Woman: Monument to Debussy” (1950-55). The third is the artist’s only reference to music, created for a monument at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Claude Debussy’s birthplace.

Maillol “spoke Catalan, wore traditional espadrilles, a sash and a barretina (the traditional Catalan cap), he danced sardanes” and he openly proclaimed his Catalan identity: “I consider Catalonia my true homeland”.

The Fundació Caixa de Catalunya is located in Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Milà, better known as “La Pedrera.” La Pedrera is much more than home to a cultural center — it’s one of the city’s modern architectural masterpieces. La Pedrera means “the Quarry.” Casa Milà took on this nickname for its uneven grey stone exterior, originally an insult at the time of its completion (1910); now an affectionate moniker. The attic floor of La Pedrera is dedicated to promoting Gaudí heritage. It’s an interactive space that recounts the artist’s life, philosophy and architectural methodology. On the floors below, you’ll also find an early 20th century Barcelona flat recreated. After all, Casa Milá was originally designed to be a modern apartment building, and this “Piso de la Pedrera” serves as a fascinating window into Barcelona bourgeois life at the time of the structure’s creation.

La Pedrera also contains an auditorium and reading rooms that hold a steady stream of activities like concerts, educational workshops and film series, in accordance with Caixa de Catalunya’s mission to ‘foster and develop Barcelona culture.’  Visit : http://www.lapedreraeducacio.org/

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