L' Air
À propos de la sculpture
This monumental nude seems to float in space. Although cast in lead, the smooth, grayish-blue surface actually enhances the form's light, buoyant appearance. Perched delicately on her right hip, the figure's extended legs and left arm create a strong horizontal, echoed in the plinth beneath her. Resting on an imaginary center of gravity, she teeters between immobility and movement, suspension and flight. The nude's face and figure are idealized--rather than a portrait of an individual, it is a personification of air. In 1938, the city of Toulouse in southern France commissioned Aristide Maillol to commemorate the pilots of the pioneering airmail service, l'Aéropostale, who had been killed in the line of duty. *Air* was cast from the plaster model for this monument. Its form was initially inspired by a small terra cotta sculpture Maillol had made several decades earlier depicting a reclining figure resting on wind-blown drapery. The artist often used the female form to symbolize aspects of nature like the sea, the seasons, and even a subject as elusive as air.
J. Paul Getty Museum
Notice
Pendant ce temps, chez Aristide Maillol
La vie entière1937
Recognition at the 1937 World's Fair
In 1937 Maillol's work won recognition at the World's Fair and in the new National Museum of Modern Art at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; that same year he was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour.
1939
Withdraws to Banyuls as war breaks out
At the outbreak of the Second World War Maillol withdrew to his native Banyuls-sur-Mer.
1940–1944
The Nazis seize his works
During the German occupation of France dozens of Maillol's works were seized by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg; the Jeu de Paume database lists thirty of them. His Head of Flora was later found in the hoard of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of Hitler's art dealer.
27 September 1944
The circumstances of his death
By some accounts, the 82-year-old Maillol died in a car accident: on the way home in a thunderstorm, the car in which he was a passenger skidded off the road and rolled over. Others call the accident the official version and say that the sculptor, having had no news of Dina Vierny, whom he believed arrested (she was Jewish), took his own life.
27 septembre 1944
Died
