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Aristide Maillol has always been fascinated by Catalonia: he spoke Catalan, wore traditional clothes and danced ?sardines?. He publicly announced: ?Catalonia is my true homeland.?

This is reason enough for a large retro perspective of one of the ?fathers? of classic modern sculpture in Catalonia: now the Fundació Caixa de Catalunya in Antoni Gaudis Casa Milà in Barcelona opens an extensive retro perspective ? there will be more than 120 exhibits of the 1861 born French artist. 

Maillol decided very early to become a painter and moved to Paris in 1881 in order to study art. After several attempts he was accepted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, Alexandre Cabanel and Bourdelle. His early paintings show the great influence of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin. Important public appointments are the 1912 memorial for Cézanne as well as many war memorials after the First World War.

In Paris Gaugin supported is interest in decorative art, when he started with Tapisserie. The high technical and aesthetic quality of his pieces earned him a lot of respect for the redevelopment of this kind of art in France. In 1895 he started to create small terracotta-sculptures and focused on sculpturing, which led to the closure of his Gobelin studio. His wife Clotilde Narcis, who he married in 1896, became his role model. In 1902 he showed his sculptures for the first time in a large exhibition at the gallery Ambroise Vollard.

1934 was an important year for him: he met the just 15 year old Dina Vierny from Odessa, who became is model, muse and partner. She opened the Musée Maillol in Paris where she died in January 2009.

Theme of Maillols work was the female body starting from a classical approach of clear forms. The figurative style of his large bronze sculptures was an important forerunner for the later flowing reduction and abstraction of Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti. He was a friend of Henri Matisse.

Maillol died on September the 27th 1944 in Banyuls during, when the car where he was a passenger crashed. This accident started speculations weather his good contacts to the German occupiers had anything to do with this. Other artists like sculptor Arno Breker discredited him after the war. However his influence for classical oriented Greek-humanistic educated artists remained untouched.

Famous are his sculptures at the Tuilerien of the Louvre as well as several worldwide placed sculptures. Three of his bronze sculptures stand at the entrance to the metropolitan opera in New York: Somme (1910-11), Venus (1920) and ?Kneeling: Memorial for Debussy? (1950-55). His only tribute to music is the memorial for Claude Debussy at his birth place in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

20.October 2009 ? 31. January 2010
Caixa Catalunya`s La Pedrera, Passeig de Gràcia 91, 08008 Barcelona
Open Mon - Sun 10 ? 20 o?clock
http://obrasocial.caixacatalunya.es/osocial/idiomes/3/fitxers/cultura/maillol/index.htm