Word: maillol
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...seems strange that one's image of Aristide Maillol is that of an elderly man, of the master of Banyuls-sur-Mer as the bearded patriarch living his solitary existence. The idea of Maillol as a youth is one which never comes to mind, though his work richly exudes the exuberance and fecundity of whatever is truly young...
...this respect, as in so many others, the sculptor Maillol is comparable to Renoir, whose portrait he modeled superbly. Both maximized, late in life, a union of sensuosity and innocence which characterizes their work. Both were passionately fond of the beautiful, even of the pretty, and achieved a voluptuousness and bursting fullness which epitomizes the joy a poet finds in all nature. Both were especially involved with the rhythm of the female form. Maillol wrote, "Girlhood with its fresh bloom, its flowerlike innocence, its confidence in life, is for me the world's greatest wonder...
...Maillol's lithographs of nudes are completely unassuming figure studies, making no attempt at emotion. Nevertheless, they are--another irony--by far the most expressive. Maillol, who admired Egyptian sculpture enormously, used to speak of finding the most significant motion in the greatest stillness. "Immobility of the body," as he himself put it, "does not mean immobility of the flesh...
These lithographs are only vignettes, yet they are wonderfully complete. Each one has its own poetic raison d'etre, each one functions perfectly as an entity. Maillol has translated the grace and fluid volume of his sculpture to the lithographer's stone with such success because he is equally as fine a draughtsman as a sculptor...
Only two of the Maillol woodcuts are shown, but these bear out the observation. They are the most graceful, the simplest and the most convincing of any woodcuts here...