Sculptors’ Drawings Over Six Centuries: 1400-1950

Sculptors’ Drawings Over Six Centuries, 1400–1950 offered a unique look into the creative process of sculptors, including such masters as Bernini, Canova, Rodin, Eakins, and Brancusi. Curated by Colin Eisler, the exhibition featured previously un-exhibited drawings focusing on the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Colin Eisler wrote of the exhibition, saying:

"Surveying drawings to and from sculpture, 1400-1950, this selection brings together works by major and minor masters who used such studies to define, reflect and create form. Sculpture often starts on paper, preceding work in the round. Most artists began their training tracing casts in line, statuary their silent teacher. New scrutiny of ancient sources started the Renaissance. Sculptors, closest to the art of antiquity, often led the way. Famed as a draftsman, Donatello used shallow relief; these, with their preparatory studies, created a new sense of space and vision. Rapid graphic formulae, boldly crossed series of parallel lines, shared the vigor of chiseled stone or engraved metal. By drawing, sculptors could enter the lettered realm of the Liberal Arts, their spirits freed from the sound and fury of the workshop. Many sculptors were celebrated for their designs--such pages won them widespread fame, traveling far more readily than works in stone or metal. Essential for assistant and patron alike, drawings guided both in instruction and selection. Studio records were also kept in illustrated form so that both motifs and finished projects could be repeated or catalogued. Baroque sculpture, with its mastery of movement and illusion may have involved drawing more than ever before. Bernini produced thousands of spirited pages including caricatures, portrait studies and highly finished renderings. Some of his sheets are pure fantasy, beyond application, ever an important aspect for sculptors' drawing, allowing them release from a slow, laborious, creative process. Life drawing, and anatomical studies, the basis of academic training, were long central to sculptors' work. Radical changes in teaching often left the graphic experience intact. Abstract art allowed ever greater eloquence to the schematic, reduced character of works on paper. Statuary by Picasso and Smith has been called drawing in space, seen against the sky. New equivalents between the graphic and plastic let drawing remain in the mind of sculptor and viewer alike from first to last. By retracing their completed work on paper, sculptors released such statuary from the limit of space and structure, now drawn to new absolutes of freedom and infinity."