'Two Girls Dancing' (1914-1917)
Bronze, 6 feet 5 inches x 41 x 43 inches
Installed in1988, lent by The Gateway Foundation.
c. Distant shot from Sculpture to Climatron®
Artist:
Carl Milles
Swedish (1875-1955)
Born near Uppsala, Sweden.
Became an apprentice to a cabinetmaker and studied sculpture at evening classes. Milles won a scholarship to the Technical School in Stockholm. From Sweden he went to Paris where he attended The Sorbonne, and was eventually admitted to the 1899 Salon. Milles later worked in Auguste Rodin's studio. Rodin strongly influenced Milles' earlier work. In 1931 he held an exhibition at the Art Museum in St Louis, showing 44 pieces, and later became the Artist in residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan. The Millesgården in Sweden then became his studio until his death in 1955.
Location:
Milles Sculpture Garden
The dancing girls with archaic Greek heads are lightly poised on tiptoe in a turning movement that seems about to liberate them from earthliness. At this time Milles was developing means of imparting to his figures the illusion of buoyancy in air or water, the quality with which he would become prominently identified. The somewhat heavy bodies executed in simplified broad planes speak for Milles' departure from the broken surfaces of Rodin, an early influence that Milles further rejected in 1917 by destroying most of the other work that he had done up to then.
