From 15 March 2024, the Dina Vierny Gallery is dedicating an exhibition to Aristide Maillol to commemorate the 80th anniversary of his death. Curated by Àlex Susanna, a leading specialist in the sculptor's work, the exhibition looks at Maillol's work through the prism of sensuality, and features a wide range of sculptures, drawings, prints, objets d'art and publications by the artist.

All of Aristide Maillol's work seems to be the fruit of a single obsession. Nothing captivated him as much as the female body. He never tired of watching women go by in the streets of Banyuls, or even more, of watching them bathe in the sea. After all, aren't his first sculptures bathers? And isn't one of the most recurrent motifs in his work that of bodies in bloom as they come into contact with water? Sensuality, desire, strength, grace, joy, playfulness, unconsciousness... But the voluptuous man who observes and desires gives way to the artist who struggles to turn ordinary Venus into celestial Venus, in a quest for pure forms and the architecture that supports them. This is why his work is devoid of the exaggerated eroticism found in Rodin's work, and is instead animated by a contained, latent sensuality. These nudes come from an idyllic world, devoid of any sense of guilt. They are innocent bodies, carefree and unaware of their seductive power.

The selection of works by the sculptor that make up this exhibition exude that same latent sensuality. Drawings, paintings, torsos, bas-reliefs, books, objets d'art and life-size sculptures: an overview of Maillol's artistic singularity.

Àlex SUSANNA



Biography of Àlex Susanna, curator.
Àlex Susanna is a poet, cultural manager, editor at the Columna publishing house, translator of writers such as Paul Valéry, Apollinaire and T.S. Eliot, columnist and professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He has directed the Barcelona Poetry Festival, which he also founded, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Fundació Caixa de Catalunya in La Pedrera (Casa Milà), and the Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage. He has curated numerous exhibitions dedicated exclusively or in part to Maillol, including at the Fundació Caixa Catalunya in Barcelona (Maillol, 2009- 10), the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (Maillol, 2012-13), the Museu Marès in Barcelona (Maillol i Grècia, 2015-16), the Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona (Maillol Horvat, 2019) and the Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud in Perpignan (Rodin, Maillol, Face à face, 2019).