Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) was a French sculptor and draughtsman whose radical treatment of the body and surface profoundly transformed modern sculpture. Rejected three times by the École des Beaux-Arts, Rodin developed his practice outside the conventional academic path. His modelling emphasised movement, fragmentation and the expressive possibilities of the human figure, challenging the polished idealism of nineteenth-century sculpture. Drawing remained fundamental throughout his career: his studies of the body reveal an increasingly free and immediate line, particularly in the works on paper of his later years.