Émille-Antoine Bourdelle

ÉMILE-ANTOINE BOURDELLE (Montauban, 1861 - Vésinet, 1929).
"Le cavalier de la chimere".
Bronze.
Signed and with stamp of the Alexis Rudier foundry.
Measurements: 23 x 21 x 10 cm.
Exhibitions: "European sculpture of the 20th century", European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), Barcelona, 2014.

Émille-Antoine Bourdelle was one of the most prominent sculptors of the Belle Époque and exerted an important influence on monumental sculpture. Continúa, the son of a cabinetmaker, began to acquire a practical knowledge of carving when he was still a child. After attending the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse, in 1884 he went on to study by means of a scholarship at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he was a disciple of Alexandre Falguiére, Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. His work was greatly influenced by Auguste Rodin, whom he had met in Paris, and with whom he worked as an assistant from 1893 to 1898. However, he later revealed himself as an independent artist. Bourdelle's originality has sometimes been overshadowed by his relationship with Rodin, but his far-reaching influence on other younger sculptors, such as Alberto Giacometti, was very important. His works were inspired by Romanesque sculptors and those of archaic Greece. Among the most famous are Hercules the Archer, first exhibited in 1910; the reliefs on the façade of the Champs-Elysées theater in 1911 and the Marseilles theater in 1924; the equestrian monument to General Alvear in Buenos Aires, and the Dying Centaur (1914).