PLASTER! and other selected sculptures

We are thrilled to be back in New York, exhibiting at Hazlitt in the Upper East Side.

Plaster as a material for creating sculpture has been used since antiquity. Throughout the centuries it was the medium for an artist’s first creative ideas. It could not only serve as a model to transfer those ideas into marble or bronze but also as a way to faithfully copy and preserve them. Without plaster, the ideas of the antique world would never have been disseminated so widely from the Renaissance onwards and notably by the great art academies of Europe. Many works of sculpture presented at the official Salon in Paris were first exhibited in plaster.

Plaster is not always white; its natural appearance can be concealed by tinting to resemble bronze and terracotta or be polychromed and even gilded. For Auguste Rodin plaster was a preferred means of expression – his virtuoso handling of the material held infinite possibilities. Yet, almost paradoxically, a medium so close to the artist’s hand has often been incorrectly regarded as secondary in a sculptor’s oeuvre.

PLASTER!, featuring sculptures by Rodin, Jean-Joseph Carriès, Théodore Géricault, Arnold Böcklin and Germaine Richier, amongst others, challenges this view and aims to refocus our attention and understanding of the medium within the world of sculpture.

Together with PLASTER!, we will also be exhibiting a selection of works including an important modello in terracotta by Filippo Parodi, a glazed ceramic sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle and a newly discovered relief of the Madonna and Child in marble by Gregorio di Lorenzo.