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Auguste Rodin was born on November 12, 1840, and dies on November 17, 1917. He was a French sculptor.
Born François-Auguste Rodin, to a working class family in Paris, he is often given a pivotal role in the history of modern sculpture, as both excelling at and rebelling from the Beaux-arts tradition. His unique, virtuoso ability to organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface set him apart from the figure sculpture traditions before and since his time.
Despite the talent evident in his portrait of the local priest who helped him discover his vocation, Rodin was denied admission to the Beaux Arts academy. He was accepted, however, at a trade school for decorative sculpture, and later moved to Belgium to work in a studio that produced that kind of work.
Many of his best-known sculptures, like The Thinker (Le Penseur, originally titled The Poet, representing the poet Dante), The Three Shades (Les Trois Ombres), and The Kiss (Le Baiser) were designed as figures for this monumental landscape of eternal passion and punishment, and only later presented as works in their own right. Other well-known works derived from The Gates are: the Ugolino group, Fugitive Love, The Falling Man, The Sirens, Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone, Damned Women, The Standing Fauness, The Kneeling Fauness, The Martyr, She Who Once Was the Beautiful Helmetmaker’s Wife, Glaucus, Polyphem.
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