Description

Auguste Rodin ‘Erotic’ Di-Litho Oil Enhanced – COA

Auguste Rodin: Femme Nue Allongée, Une Main sur le sexe et Une Jambe Relèvée.

Di-Litho ‘highly erotic’ aquarel enhanced, after his original pen drawing.

Specifications

✓ Special non-authorized edition by Rosenbaum (2009)
✓ Printed single sided on heavy designer paper
✓ Size: 42 cm x 29,5 cm (16.8″ x 11.8″)
✓ Signed in the plate
✓ Numbered on reverse ‘Test nr. 3’ out of 10 copies
✓ Certification on reverse side

Information on Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin’s most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Successive works brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.

From the unexpected realism of his first major figure — inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy — to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, Rodin’s reputation grew, such that he became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin’s work after his World’s Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. He married his life-long companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculpture suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades, his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.

The popularity of Rodin’s most famous sculptures tends to obscure his total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades. He painted in oils (especially in his thirties) and in watercolors. The Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings, prints in chalk and charcoal, several hundreds of lithographs linked to his sculptures and busts and thirteen vigorous drypoints. “It’s very simple. My drawings are the key to my work,” declared the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin. It’s true that he’s remembered for his sculptures, but he also ought to be remembered as one of the most prolific drawers of his time. The sheer volume of his drawn oeuvre is impressive: some 10000 drawings, most of them not exhibited during Rodin’s life.

The infinitely fascinating female body and the pursuit of undiscovered movements drives Rodin further. Without taking his eyes off the model in movement, he quickly sketched down the impressions. They were then transferred to a new piece of paper and finished with color. The limits of paper gave rise to collage experiments. And it was here that sculpture and drawing coincided. A new totality is created with cutting and pasting. Rodin’s confident lines and thin color layers capture a supreme sensibility and serene sensualism. Now and then we crash land in challenging drawings of women’s genitals or a sexual act. As an illustrator, his two main achievements were the line and wash illustrations to an 1883 edition of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), a work Rodin greatly admired, and s set of simple color illustrations for Octave Mirbeau’s 1899 work Le jardin des supplices (The Torture Garden), which clearly resonated with Rodin’s sense of the complexity of the human condition. As a painter, mostly in ink, wash and watercolor, he produced some of the most sensitive and beautiful figure drawings of his or any time.

Rodin´s hand immediately expresses what he sees in front of him: women – no men nor mixed couples -, mostly young, naked or half-naked, dancing, bending over, stretching, sprawling, often drawing up or spreading their legs so that their uncovered sex shows. In large series of drawings, Rodin circles around the centre of the female body, the “eternal tunnel”, or The Origin of the World – the title of Gustave Courbet´s 1866 painting, that still provokes visitors in the Musée d´Orsay.

Information on Di-litho

The di-litho technology, a lithographic technology in which the printing plate prints directly onto the printing substrate, was basically uniquely created for newspaper printing. The benefit from this technology was that conventional letterpress rotary printing presses could be used. The printing units of these presses have been modified by the installing of a dampening unit.

Printing was done with conventional printing plates, however a special coating needed to be applied to them because of the very high tension because of the direct contact with the paper and the high stability with the full print run necessary in newspaper printing or the more expensive art-litho printing.

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