To the warriors: the first memorial

Born in Montauban in 1861, Antoine Bourdelle left secondary education to join the École des beaux-arts in Toulouse in 1876. In 1884, the young man was admitted to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he left two years later, as he was sure that his “school was the street.” From 1885 on, he rented a workshop at 16 Impasse du Maine (today Rue Antoine-Bourdelle), in the Montparnasse area — a meeting point for bohemian, cosmopolitan, and penniless artists.

The first years in Paris were laborious ones. Although he exhibited regularly in the annual Salons, Bourdelle also became Auguste Rodin’s practitioner: between 1893 and 1908, he was tasked with rough-cutting marble blocks for the famous sculptor.

In 1895, Bourdelle went back to his native city to create a Monument aux morts, aux combattants et serviteurs du Tarn-et-Garonne de 1870–1871 (Memorial to the Dead, Warriors, and Servants of Tarn-et-Garonne from 1870–1871). Inaugurated in 1902, his first large-scale monument earned him public notoriety. The monument also broke away from the usual heroism depicted in war memorials.

For his Warriors, which condemned the “unparalleled piling up of mass graves”, Bourdelle accumulated sketches and variations, exploring an aestheticism based on fragments and assembling. Athletic — although dismembered — bodies, howling mouths, revolted faces, contorted arms: Bourdelle created an expressive, or even expressionist, vocabulary, and photographed the gestation of this sculpted ensemble.