Aristide Maillol (French, 1861-1944)

Original Woodcuts & Lithographs

Showing March 6-29, 2008

Catalan artist Aristide Maillol discovered his talent for drawing at college in Perpignan in southwestern France. In 1882, he moved to Paris to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Maillol greatly enjoyed both painting and printmaking but as his eyesight deteriorated he increasingly devoted himself to sculpture, the medium for which he became internationally renowned. Toward the end of his life, the artist returned to printmaking and book illustration, providing images for Phillipe Gonin's French editions of many of the great works of pagan antiquity. Maillol's elegant woodcuts illustrate mythological subjects with playful simplicity, while his lithographs of female nudes reveal a graceful emphasis on form and volume evocative of his sculptural work.

Lithographs

Woodcuts