Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin transformed the conventions of nineteenth-century sculpture without abandoning the human figure. He worked through repeated studies in clay and plaster, enlarging, recombining, and casting forms in ways that made process visible in the finished work.

His surfaces catch light unevenly and his bodies often resist stable poses. Rather than illustrating a single heroic action, Rodin concentrated emotion into weight, gesture, incompletion, and the charged space between figures.