Donated by the Swiss Pierre Gianadda Foundation, this 2.10 meter statue was produced from molds and plaster models given by the sculptor to the French State in 1916.
The city of Besançon, birthplace of Victor Hugo, inaugurated Thursday an unprecedented sculpture of the writer, work of Rodin, and offered by the Swiss foundation Pierre Gianadda.
The black bronze of 2.10 meters for 250 kilos shows a Victor Hugo standing, walking, presenting the face of an old man but a vigorous and muscular body. He is shown naked. “For me, you don’t wear a frock coat on a god”had at the time justified Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) with Camille Claudel.
“These are iconoclastic choices, a naked Victor Hugo, it is not necessarily in the spirit of the timeunderlined Hugues Herpin, head of department at the Rodin Museum. But Rodin seeks above all the truth and the expression of Victor Hugo’s creation through this very powerful modelling”.
The statue is a gift from the Swiss Pierre Gianadda Foundation. Léonard Gianadda, its president, wanted to repair what he saw “like an injustice”: if Rodin had portrayed Victor Hugo several times, the birthplace of the writer did not have any work by the sculptor, despite the wish expressed many times by the town hall.
This statue was produced from molds and plaster models donated by the sculptor to the French State in 1916, kept in the reserves of the Rodin museum in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), and rediscovered in 2019.
Its bronze cast, unpublished, was made in three copies. In addition to the one exhibited in Besançon, one will be kept by the Gianadda Foundation in Martigny (south-west Switzerland), the other at the Rodin Museum in Paris. “The Rodin Museum, as the beneficiary of the artist, retains the moral rights attached to the work, and has the possibility of publishing Rodin’s work, including posthumously, from the original moulds. left by the artist“, specified Hugues Herpin.
“This statue of Victor Hugo will demonstrate the vigor, the strength and the greatness of these fights that must be kept alive even today, the defense of human rights, the fight against the death penalty, against slavery, misery, rejection of others, and xenophobia”said the mayor (EELV) of Besançon, Anne Vignot.
She also mentioned the “unacceptable controversy” whose town hall was recently the target, about the restoration of another statue of Victor Hugo, work of Ousmane Sow, exposed in Besançon. “These works have a role of transmitting a message: it is art that shakes up, that helps us to understand, to move forward, to interpret the world”concluded the elected official.
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