Falling Man. Torso of a Young Man, Design before 1904, cast in 1948

The French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) invested the male body, reduced to the torso, with expressive powers: The flexed stomach, back and shoulder muscles visible in the modeled surface make the torso appear as if it were involuntarily falling forward. The principle of the torso disappoints any expectation of an ideal rendering of the human form. In the oeuvre of Rodin, his torsi mark an important stage on his path towards his own sculptural expression, which the artist regarded as a mediator between internal and external perception. This allowed him to become an ingenious innovator of plastic art and to revolutionize 20th-century sculpture.

AK, 2021