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Druet sees Rodin
Sculpture & Photography

02.11.2005 to 08.01.2006

Alte Nationalgalerie
Alte Nationalgalerie

In Co-operation with the Museum for Photography

This exhibition at the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) presents for the first time the complete holdings of the 125 photographs by Eugène Druet from the National Museums' central archive. Former National Gallery director Hugo von Tschudi bought these photographs exactly a hundred years ago. Exhibited together with a number of his bronze sculptures, they picture exclusively the work of the sculptor Auguste Rodin who, after around 1900, was regarded as a formative father figure of modern art. Druet not only photographed Rodin's famous marble sculptures including for instance 'The Kiss' and the much-reproduced works 'The Age of Bronze' or 'The Thinker' but also his memorials for Victor Hugo and the well-known group 'The Burghers of Calais'. Additionally, there are photographs of smaller sculptures which, up to this day, tend to be known only by experts.

Druet's photographs, very painterly in style, are still significant today: they do not only reproduce the sculptures in a documentary fashion but interpret them by way of sophisticated lighting, views of the surrounding space, the inclusion of photographic equipment and the use of a variety of perspectives and contrasts which sometimes border on the bizarre.

In the exhibition, the photographs are presented in five cabinets, the presentation enriched through a number of works by Rodin from the National Gallery's collection. The catalogue offers detailed entries and large plates of the exhibits as well as comments on the photographic technique.