Camille Claudel, The Sculptor Of Emotions
Among all the works by Camille Claudel, “The Mature Age” stands out. In it, we appreciate the bewildering beauty of the most intense passion. And the pain. This work of 1899, evokes in a certain sense what was his life and also his suffering.
Camile Claudel loved Auguste Rodin, but he, in this sculpture, walks away wrapped in that cloak of destiny, turning his face to his former young lover. The brilliant sculptor who, in the bronze composition, begs on her knees not to be abandoned. Not to be humiliated. A symbolic set of exquisite realism that evokes endless human emotions as old as time itself. Those that did in Camille, falling into contempt. In being admitted to a mental hospital and being buried in a common grave. Nameless. We invite you to get to know this great French artist a little more.
THE VIRTUOUS SCULPTOR OF EMOTION
Camille Claudel was very young when she began to fulfill her childhood dream: to be part of the Paris Art School and the Colarussi Academy. Such an opportunity allowed him to attract the attention of one of the greats, Auguste Rodin, the master of sculpture.
His life until then had been simple and fortunate. His father was a French government official and his brother an influential politician, a family that although protective, had always allowed him to choose the personal path dictated by his heart. And his vibrated by creation, by the intense art that he had in his hands to give life to stone, marble, bronze … He had a gift, and that was above all to give an incredible expressiveness to all his figures. There they pumped the nerves emerging from the skin, the subtlety of love shining in the eyes, the sweetness of hands caressing the lover’s body. Camille Claudel was unique despite her youth and Rodin noticed her, it was inevitable. And he made her his assistant.
And even more. Despite being married, and honoring his eternally womanizing spirit, he did not hesitate to make her his lover and take her to the outskirts of Paris, where he built a workshop specifically for their relationship. There where they began to work together, to create … and to live as a couple away from the gaze of society.
But society is cruel, criticism, rumors and a wife who wanted to denounce Rodin, finally gave a clear warning to the master sculptor. Either he formalized their relationship by separating from his wife, or he left his lover. And what was Rodin’s decision? Abandon Camile. As simple as that. So devastating.
The following years were an act of survival and an ocean of emotions where the sculptor was sinking little by little and day after day. All his sculptures represented his suffering, his bewilderment. Almost all the male figures had something of Auguste Rodin: his arms, his face, his feet …
Such was the obsession to which she ended up immersed, that her brother thought it best to put her in a mental hospital. For your health, to restore balance. Despite having doubts at first, it was finally decided to force Camile Claudel into a psychiatric hospital. Against his will.
It was his artistic end and his despair. Little by little, he stopped creating, stopped drawing and plunged into a senseless passing of the days . Remembering a love that could never be. Camile spent the rest of her life there, dying in 1943. When she died, she was buried in a mass grave, in an unnamed grave in the Montdevergues mental institution.
When in 1955 some relatives wanted to give him a dignified burial, they informed them that it was impossible. His remains had been lost. Fortunately, we still have his work and his memory, the one that we continue to evoke when we see the subtlety of his perfect sculptures. So full of life and misunderstood intensity.
