Aristide Maillol
Maillol studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Académie under Alexandre Cabanel and Jean Léon Gérôme from 1882 to 1886. He was influence by the work of contemporaries Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin. Around the turn of the century Gauguin suggested that Maillol join Les Nabis, a group of post-Impressionist, avant-garde artists, who developed an anti-naturalist, symbolist pictorial language with two-dimensionally-decorative, simplified colour shapes and black contours. This style influenced Maillol’s early paintings and tapestry designs.
In 1897 Maillol set up a tapestry studio at his home village of Banyuls, where he employed local women as weavers. He initially produced wall tapestries in the Art Nouveau style, before an ocular disease forced him to focus his talents on sculpture. He began to create small, wood and clay statues from which he developed his monumental stone and bronze statues.
Maillol’s first main work La Méditerranée (1902-1905), displays the influence of the harmonious balance and classical expression of Hellenistic antiquity. Maillol’s voluptuous female figures, reminiscent of Gauguin’s women as well as of Renoir’s later nudes, considerably influenced European sculpture. Maillol also produced important graphic works including drawings, lithographs and woodcuts.
A first overview of his works was shown in Paris in 1937. As part of the exhibition ‘Les maîtres de l'art indépendant’ which was shown at the Petit Palais, three rooms were reserved for Maillol. The artist was awarded with grand commissions, such as in 1936 when he received the order for the monumental sculpture La Montagne for the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. In 1944 at the age of 83, Maillol was involved in a car accident in Banyuls which took his life.
A large collection of Maillol's work is maintained at the Musée Maillol in Paris, which was established by Dina Vierny, Maillol's muse. His home a few kilometers outside Banyuls, also the site of his final resting place, has been turned into a museum where a number of his works and sketches are displayed.