On February 17 the 5th Big Sculpture Salon will open in Art Arsenal. This year the Salon will be adorned by a complete collection of sculptures by the unsurpassed French impressionist Edgar Degas (1834-1917). They will be exhibited in Ukraine for the first time.
The sculptures by this prominent impressionist occupy a special place in the history of world art. Degas started modeling small wax sculptures at the end of the 1860s, moving toward sculpture and pastels as his eyesight deteriorated. Degas’ sculptures were like his paintings: he modeled dancers, bathers, horses and jockeys. It should be noted that Degas used only soft materials for his sculptures, which he made for himself — they served him for sketches and only some of the sculptures were finished.
Once he grew old the painter focused on sculptures, as he had nearly lost his sight completely, and thus found touch more trustworthy. Supported by his friend, the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartolome, Degas created lots of wax and clay figures of dancers and horses. Degas liked the wax for its ability to change; his friends who attended his studio sometimes found a wax ball instead of a sculpture — Degas had probably been disappointed by his work. None of those sculptures, except for the Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (it will be presented in the Art Arsenal), were exhibited by Degas. After the artist’s death about 70 works were found in his studio and the painter’s relatives made their bronze replicas; Degas never worked with metal or stone.
The first replicas appeared in 1921. For many years it was thought that the wax originals didn’t survive. However, in 1954, they were found in the basement of his house — it turned out that duplicates had been used for the founding. The following year all the wax sculptures by Degas were bought by the American collector Paul Mellon, who gave several sculptures to the Louvre and still owns most of them. Every wax sculpture was founded 20 to 25 times, which is why their total number is about 1,500. Some are exhibited in museums all over the world, for example the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen has a complete collection.
Thus, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the exhibit in Kyiv: we will see 74 bronze replicas of Edgar Degas’ sculptures, ordered by the artist’s relatives.
The 5th Salon will also present sculptures by 30 leading Ukrainian masters, working in various genres and styles. The exhibition will be held from February 18 to March 13, and will be open each day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The Day’s FACT FILE
The Big Sculpture Salon has been held in Kyiv since 2007. In previous years its central events were a presentation of ancient monumental sculptures from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages, the exposition of sculptures by the art-deco master Demetr Chyparus, a collection of masterpieces by the avant-gardist Alberto Giacometti and by the dadaism founder Hans Arp, and a presentation of classical sculptors of the 20th century: Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali. The Big Sculpture Salon organized one of the rare presentations of Oleksandr Arkhypenko’s works in Ukraine, and presented a collection by the famous European sculptor of Ukrainian origin Gregor Kruk. It also exhibited the baroque masterpieces by the “Ukrainian Michelangelo” Johann Georg Pinzel.
