10 October 2008 – 22 March 2009

Focus on: Auguste Rodin

Two years before the outbreak of World War I, the Städel Museum acquired Auguste Rodin’s bronze figural group Faun – dating from c. 1885 and measuring approximately 40 cm in height – from the Parisian art dealer Eugene Druet. At the time, Druet was not only one of the most important dealers for Rodin’s works but also one of their most prominent photographers. The figural group Faun consists of a fantastical, horse-hoofed male being and a female figure besetting him. Both were taken from the many-detailed programme for the Gates of Hell which Rodin developed from 1880 onward for the double bronze portal of the Paris Musee des Arts decoratifs. The sculptor continually changed and rearranged the figural programme for his Gates, and due to the figures’ multi-interpretability he was able to isolate and reutilize them – somewhat changed – in other contexts. The exhibition investigates both the theme of this highly wilful and disconcertingly enigmatic figural group – wild forest creatures in an encounter of unleashed eroticism – and the ways in which the assemblage has been employed as well as the history of its acquisition and of its treatment in scholarly literature.

Curator: Dr. Eva Mongi-Vollmer

Address

Städel Museum / Städtische Galerie
Schaumainkai 63
60596 Frankfurt am Main
phone +49 69 605 09 80
http://www.staedelmuseum.de

Opening Hours

Tuesday, Friday-Sunday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday 10 a.m. - 9 p.m., closed on Monday.

Description of the Museum

700 years of European history are represented in a collection of 2,700 paintings, 600 sculptures and 100,000 prints and drawings by artists ranging from Dürer, Holbein and Cranach to Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Van Gogh and Cézanne to Matisse and Picasso, Bacon and Baselitz, Serra and Palermo.

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