Maillol, Aristide

(1861-1944)

   sculptor, painter

   Born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Aristide Maillol studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1882-86), and at first produced paintings, tapestries, and engravings before discovering his talent as a sculptor. Influenced by pierre puvis de chavannes and paul gauguin, as well as by the art of classical Greece, he restricted himself almost entirely to the female nude, and his figures often portray large, imposing, earthy women. With strong but never contorted poses, the faces of Maillol's figures express relatively generalized emotions of impassive seriousness or severity. Rather than originality, he sought perfection, and his style varied little throughout his career. Examples of this style, in which he reconciled mas-siveness and heaviness with grace and sensualness, are Pomone (1907), Flore (1911), Île-de-France (1925), L'Air (1938), and La Rivière (1939-43). Considered the most distinguished sculptor in the period between auguste rodin and the moderns, Maillol, through his classically inspired art, essentially marked the end of an earlier tradition, rather than the beginning of a new one.