Auguste Rodin
Truth Form Life
Van Every Gallery
On View: January 23, 2020— April 05, 2020
Opening Reception: January 23, 2020, 7:00 pm— 8:30 pm
Reception Hosted by Friends of the Arts
Related Programs & Events
Lecture: Drama from head to toe: Rodin and the Making of the Burghers of Calais
January 23, 2020, 6:00 pm—7:00 pm
Lecture by Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting & Sculpture & Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Art Museum. After the lecture, join us for a reception of "Rodin: Truth Form Life/Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections," from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Van Every/Smith Galleries at the Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Art Center. Find a link to a video of this lecture below.
Lecture: Performing Stillness: Auguste Rodin's Nijinsky
March 26, 2020, 6:00 pm—7:00 pm
Lecture by Juliet Bellow, Associate Professor of Art History, American University
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE GALLERIES ARE NOW CLOSED DUE TO CONCERNS OVER COVID-19. UPDATES WILL BE POSTED UNDER THE HOMEPAGE IMAGE WHERE OUR HOURS ARE TYPICALLY POSTED.
At the peak of his career Auguste Rodin was regarded as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. Rejecting Nineteenth-Century academic traditions that dictated what was proper in art, Rodin made sculpture that conveyed the vitality of the human spirit. His vigorous modeling emphasized his personal response to the subject, and he conveyed movement and emotion by inventing new poses – often sexual in nature – and gestures. He created his own form of artistic expression that was grounded in the world he saw around him rather than in the past. Today we acknowledge that Rodin’s vision led sculpture into the modern era.
Truth Form Life presents 22 works, many inspired by Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, his first public commission in 1880. Other works on view include commissioned portraits including of celebrated French heroes like Balzac, Hugo, and Jean d’Aire, one of the Burghers of Calais.
Exhibition, programming, and catalogue made possible by the support of the Herb Jackson and Laura Grosch Gallery Endowment, Malu Alvarez ’02, and Davidson College Friends of the Arts.
Click here to view a PDF checklist of the exhibition, including commentary about the artworks.
Click here for a panoramic view of the exhibition.
View the exhibition brochure below.
