Rodin Exhibition Opens April 30

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia

Staff Reporter

Several masterpiece sculptures by French master Auguste Rodin, including ``The Thinker,'' ``The Hand of God'' and ``Balzac,'' will be shown outside France for the first time at the ``Rodin: Retrospective'' that opens in Seoul, April 30.

The exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art, downtown Seoul, will showcase 180 pieces ― 113 sculptures in bronze, marble and plaster, 42 drawings and 25 photographs.

The Musee Rodin in Paris, France is lending some of the most famous sculptures from its vast collection for this major retrospective in Seoul.

Dr. Seo Soun-jou, exhibition director, said Rodin was an artist who successfully infused delicate human emotions such as passion, love and hatred in his sculptures.

But what made Rodin a great sculptor? Seo said it was Rodin's talent and artistic originality. ``These keywords not solely earned Rodin worldwide fame but also enabled him to realize the idiosyncratic harmonization of both composition and abstraction, especially shown in Balzac. With his dynamic sculptures, the combination of body and soul in human figure, Rodin is still extolled as a pathfinder and precursor of modern sculpture,'' he said.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections, The Age of Bronze; The Gates of Hell; The Burghers of Calais; The Figures of Eros; Rodin in His Studio; Dance: Body in Movement; Camille Claudel; Rodin in 1900, Pavillion d'Alma and The Monuments ― Balzac and Victor Hugo.