After Auguste Rodin, 20th century.

After AUGUSTE RODIN (France, 1840 - 1917); 20th century.
"The thinker".
Patinated bronze.
Presents signature.
Measurements: 54 x 45 x 27 cm.
The figure of the Thinker of Rodin belongs to the most important work of the sculptor, the Gates of Hell, made between 1880 and 1917. They have as their theme the Inferno of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy", and in fact the central figure, the Thinker himself, is a portrait of Dante, who is affected by what he is seeing (friezes with the sinful figures below him), and influenced by the divine forces that announce misfortune over his head (three shadows or triple portrait of Adam). Scholars assimilate this figure also to Rodin himself: a man terrified of the world he is living in, in which technology advances unstoppably, and he is right in the middle, where he must choose whether to remain faithful to tradition or jump into the void and break all the canons established so far.
Rodin is currently considered "the first modern", since he was the figure who put an end to more than two centuries in search of mimesis in the three-dimensional arts. He began his training at the School of Decorative Arts in Paris, and was particularly interested in anatomy, mastering it to the point of arousing the envy of sculptors trained at the Academy of Fine Arts. In fact, the scandal surrounding his sculpture "The Age of Bronze" (1877) was famous, of which it was said that, for its perfection, the molds had to have been taken directly from the body of the model and not from a clay model made by the artist. Rodin emerged victorious from the dispute, as well as with a fame that immediately placed him among the most important artists in Paris. After this scandal, his sculpture was divided into two distinct lines. The first, which he called "alimentary", was the decorative sculpture from which he lived. The second, more popular and transgressive, is known as his pure work, transcendent in the history of Western art.