• Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929)

• 68 x 33 x 35 cm
• 1901
• Bronze
• MB br. 566
• Paris, musée Bourdelle

From 1888 to his death in 1929, Bourdelle made around eighty sculptures, like so many variations on the figure of Beethoven. Early on, the artist from Mautauban identified with the German composer, aesthetically as well as physically. Bourdelle therefore endlessly depicted an alter ego, sometimes by pursuing the idea of resemblance, sometimes by deforming his facial features, even distorting them. Here, at the turn of the century, the artist chose to deliver a frontal, static image of Beethoven, deploying his voluminous hair in space and structuring his inscrutable face around a pained grimace. The solemnity of the image is reinforced by a quote from Beethoven, which features on the polyhedral base like an epitaph : " I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind ".

Autor de la nota : Colin Lemoine