From Rodin to Bourgeois: Sculpture in the 20th century

From Rodin to Bourgeois: Sculpture in the 20th century
The evolution of sculpture in the West

Auguste Rodin, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Umberto Boccioni, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Donald Judd, Louise Bourgeois and many more... These are the main players in this major retrospective of modern sculpture. From Rodin to Bourgeois: Sculpture in the 20th century pinpoints the key developments in modern European and American sculpture. From Rodin’s Balzac right through to Sandback’s yarn sculptures and Bourgeois’s famous spiders: the exhibition is a journey through the high points in the history of sculpture in the West. According to the cliché, The Netherlands is a country of painting, not of sculpture. The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag is keen to prove that the opposite is the case. This autumn’s wide-ranging exhibition will extend well beyond the confines of the museum, focusing public attention on the art of sculpture and its many virtuoso practitioners in the Western world.

Roughly speaking, the history of sculpture can be divided into three main periods: classical antiquity; the Renaissance, when Michelangelo took the art to new heights; and the 20th century, when artists freed sculpture from spatial constraints, hanging it from the ceiling, laying it on the ground, and liberating it from visible reality. Based on six themes, From Rodin to Bourgeois: Sculpture in the 20thcentury will provide a largely chronological overview of developments in this final key period in the history of sculpture. The exhibition uses masterpieces of international art history to demonstrate these key developments in modern sculpture. Many of the works have never previously been exhibited in the Netherlands.

Artists featured in the exhibition:

Carl Andre, Jean Arp, Vladimir Baranov‐Rossiné, Ernst Barlach, Renato Guiseppe Bertelli, Umberto Boccioni, Emile‐Antoine Bourdelle, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Henk Chabot, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp‐Villon, Emil Filla, Dan Flavin, Naum Gabo, Henri Gaudier‐Brzeska, Alberto Giacometti, Eric Gill, Julio González, Otto Gutfreund, Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, Henri Laurens, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Aristide Maillol, Marino Marini, Henri Matisse, Joseph Mendes da Costa, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, John Rädecker, Germaine Richier, Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Fred Sandback, Kurt Schwitters, Tony Smith, Paul Thek, Jean Tinguely, William Turnbull, Carel Visser, Tjipke Visser, Ossip Zadkine.