Rodin & Dance: The Essence Of Movement

Exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, 20 October 2016 - 22 January 2017

Exploring the artist's fascination with dance and bodies in extreme acrobatic poses, the exhibition and accompanying catalog capture Rodin's passion for the new forms of dance-from South Asian dances to music hall and the avant-garde-that began to appear on the French scene around 1900. 

Rodin made hundreds of drawings and watercolors of dancers. Beginning around 1911, he also gave sculptural expression to this fascination with dancers' bodies and movements by creating Mouvements de danse, a series of small studies of clay figures (each about a foot high) that stretch and twist in disturbing ways. 

Presented with associated drawings and photographs of some of the dancers, they show a new facet of Rodin's art, in which he pushed the boundaries of sculpture, expressing themes of struggle and gravity.

 The exhibition catalog aims to be the definitive reference on Rodin's dance movements, with essays written by specialists in the sculpture.