12.11.1840-17.11.1917

175 years ago on November 12, 1840, the outstanding sculptor Auguste Rodin was born. A great rebel and an experimenter, he was able to breathe life into sculpture, transmitting in the plastic of the body the whole spectrum of human emotions.

Rodin was born in a poor family, his father was a small servant, and his mother – a simple maid. The desire of his son to become an artist did not cause the approval of his parents, but thanks to the support of his older sister, Auguste was allowed to enter the free drawing school, where he studied for 3 years. After graduation and three unsuccessful attempts to enter the School of Fine Arts, Rodin gets a job as a decorator.

In 1864, at the Paris Salon Auguste Rodin, an attempt was made to show his first work – “A Man with a Broken Nose.” The attempt was unsuccessful, the unusual work shocked the public.

From 1864 to 1870 years. Rodin worked in the workshop of Albert Carrière-Bériz, creating decorative sculptures, then from 1871 to 1877. worked in Brussels. The work of this period is almost not preserved or it is difficult to identify them, since the sculptor did not sign them.

His best sculptures he created already in adulthood. In 1880, the government instructed Rodin to formalize the central entrance to the Museum of Decorative Arts under construction in Paris. Above this work the master worked almost to the end of his life, calling it the “Gates of Hell”, which became Rodin’s greatest creation.

The life of Auguste Rodin is famous for two stories of love – the devoted Rose Børe, with whom the sculptor lived for more than half a century in a civil marriage and married at the age of 76 two weeks before her death, and the passionate Camilla Claudel, who, despite her talent, and the mistress of the great Rodin.