French Sculptor Quotes

Auguste Rodin

Georges Braque

Aristide Maillol

Benvenuto Cellini

Camille Claudel

Ossip Zadkine

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colourist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings.

At first, I thought I had found in this second figure [a bronze Orpheus, Zadkine made just after his return from New York, in 1944] the perfect solution, but a surprise awaited me. One day my coal merchant delivered to me, here in my studio, some wood for heating; among these logs I found a rudimentary but completely mysterious wooden figure of a man. He seemed to be walking in great strides, his torso suggested by only two simple boards which, in their structure, were very much like an ancient lyre. I immediately began working on a new 'Orpheus', in which the instrument had truly become part of the man.

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.

The great artist is conscious of the talent and power he possesses otherwise he would not see his faults and so would not be able to improve.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

The immobility that the artist creates is not at all that of the photograph. A worth of art contains latent life, possibility of movement; a grimace made eternal does not represent life. One always talks of Donatello, but never of della Quercia. Yet della Qercia invented Michelangelo's style before Michelangelo.

Aristide Maillol

I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born, I have confidence in it (automatic painting). I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands.

More and more, the subject of an exhibition tends not be the display of artworks, but the exhibition of the exhibition as a work of art. Here, the Documenta team, headed by Harald Szeemann, exhibits (artworks) and exposes itself (to critiques).

There is always something missing that torments me.

Camille Claudel

One can pass on responsibility, but not the discretion that goes with it.

Benvenuto Cellini

If all creation rests upon a passion, it is for me also an act of love and an attempt to discover in myself an inner world.

Constantine Andreou