Torso of a Young Woman

Aristide Maillol was born in the countryside and loved the land, endlessly depicting it. As his eyesight began to fail about the turn of the century, he devoted himself almost exclusively to sculpture. His work in that field embodies the “return to style,” the revival of a classical quality. Critics often compared Maillol to Auguste Rodin: the one tormented, the other calm, and yet both modellers, lovers of the female body and admirers of ancient Greek sculpture. However, whereas Rodin fragmented his shapes, contorting and varying them, Maillol constructed, stabilized and refined his material. There is no story behind his work, always the same high-breasted, round-hipped woman. This bronze is a single edition made under Maillol’s supervision after his plaster model of about 1932 (Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington).