Auguste Rodin. Shadow figures, drawings

The exhibition I Disegni di Auguste Rodin/Drawings by Auguste Rodin, promoted by the Council of Milan in co-operation with the French Cultural Centre, presents the series “visto si stampi/cleared for printing”, i.e. drafts of 124 incisions, noted and approved by Rodin and sometimes with comments by the printmakers themselves, which constitutes almost the whole collection called ‘Album Fenaille’, named after the patron who financed it, or ‘Album Goupil’ after the name of the publishing house that published it in 1897.
We should highlight the fundamental role of Fenaille who alone paid for all the costs of the album, thus allowing the circulation of almost unknown drawings by Rodin. The originality of the drawings in the album, their exceptional nature and the great quality of the technical aspects surprised Rodin’s contemporaries as they still do today.
This work represents an essential instrument to know this great artist. The album is presented as a folder in a limited edition of 125 numbered copies. Inside there is a foreword by Octave Mirbeau and 129 tables representing 142 drawings reproduced by colour photogravure (a technique developed in the 1870s by Henry Rousselon, director of the Goupil ateliers). The drawings, selected by Rodin himself, are grouped into three sections: Inferno/Hell (82 tables) – Limbo (31 tables) – Studi/Studies (16 tables).
The drawings are from the 1880s, a period when the sculptor was working at the ‘door to Hell’, and they are inspired mostly by Dante’s Inferno.