Quatrième de couverture : Rodin is an immense graphic artist. With almost 10,000 drawings made during his whole life, it is an enormous work which is analyzed here by subject, confirming all the vitality and modernity of Rodin. From the portrait to the cut-outs, from the Antiquity to modern dance, this book proves the originality of a sculptor's drawing and presents its numerous facets. Sculptor's drawings are a constant concern about space and movement. It is the use of colour to represent volumes, pencil strokes to throw into relief the inked surfaces. Rodin is going to improve this practice up to still unexplored points, with cut-outs which prefigure Matisse, by the exploration of the female model up to its barest and most turbulent intimacy. From Les Fleurs du Mal to the Cambodian Dancers, the synthesis is admirable, the reading is clear : "Hell and Paradise" is the first book which recounts the career of this graphic artist and which gives it back its cohesion, its importance.
Biographie de l'auteur : Claudie Judrin, Head Curator of the drawings and of the personal collection of the artist is notably the author of the drawings' inventory : five reference volumes in which the 7,200 works included in the drawings exhibition room of the Musée Rodin are presented and annotated.
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