Aristide Maillol

Study for 'The Thought' or 'The Mediterranean'

1905

Aristide Maillol is best known for his classic depictions of female figures created from abstracted, simplified forms and strong lines. He was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, France, in 1861, and died there in 1944. Maillol began painting at the age of 14 and took drawing lessons at the Perpignan Museum. He was admitted to the Painting and Sculpture section of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1885. He received his first solo exhibition of sculptures in 1902 at Galerie Vollard in Paris, and his first international exhibitions in 1913 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Armory Show in the United States. His work was the subject of a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland, in 1933, while he was still alive, as well as posthumously in 1975 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. His sculptures, paintings, drawings, terracotta works and tapestry can be found in the Maillol Museum in Paris, France. His work can also be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in Boston, Massachusetts; the Museum of Modern Art, In New York; and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France. Three of his bronze sculptures are also displayed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.