Aristide Maillol : La Quête De L'harmonie

Exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 12 April - 21 August 2022 ;
then at the Kunsthaus, Zurich, 7 October 2022 - 22 January 2023
and at La Piscine, Roubaix, 18 February - 21 May 2023

An artist with a full place at the beginning of the XXᵉ century, during the birth of modernity, Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) came late to sculpture. Initially a painter, he turned to tapestry and the decorative arts. This early part of his career, during which he looked to Gauguin and Puvis de Chavannes and forged close links with the Nabis, is little known and shows an artist eager to rediscover the principles of mural decoration.

This catalogue of the first major monographic exhibition devoted to Maillol since that of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in 1961 presents 230 works by the French sculptor as well as his creative process, his favourite themes and his affinities with other artists. The exhibition presents the first Méditerranée made in 1905 for Count Kessler, his patron, and the second commissioned eighteen years later by the French state in an unprecedented confrontation. A place is also given to his paintings and drawings.