Description:Created as a minimalist composition, Minne executed this work using bas relief in order to focus the viewer's attention upon the intimate relationship between mother and child. Luminescent in quality, this piece captures the qualities of vigilance and dependence.
Entitled Moeder Met Kind (Mother and Child) this work is dated circa 1902. The piece is an original plaster sculpture signed by the artist along the back left-hand corner.
Positioned at a slight contra posto, the mother attentively stairs into the distance affectionately clutching her child. Minne's orientation of the sculpture creates a sense of movement and agility which is intensified by the stiff relationship between figure and base. Representing the child as part of the mother, Minne sensitively depicts the tenderness of maternity and the dependant relationship between mother and child. The infant appears to emerge from the mother's being, with the child's head, body and feet melting into the sculpture. Adding delicate details such as the child's plump hand pressed against the mother's back and the child's feet that wrap around the mother's side, Minne draws the observer into confidence with the pair allowing the viewer to experience the serenity of the mother's arms.
Information about the Artist:
In his work of the late 1800s, George Minne captured a sense of spiritual unease strikingly contemporary in its outlook. The attenuated proportions, softly modeled flesh, and unstable posture of his simple, mystical figures express anxiety and resignation. At the Ghent Academy, Minne studied architecture before taking courses in sculpture and painting. Around 1887, when Minne began exhibiting, Symbolist writers like Maurice Maeterlinck recognized the power of his grieving, injured figures and invited him to illustrate their literary works, which also de-emphasized naturalism in favoring of exploring human spiritual life and inner conflict.
Auguste Rodin's work was a point of departure for Minne. But about 1891, after Rodin had patronizingly dismissed him with words of encouragement, Minne returned to Belgium. He worked for his architect father, married, and soon went bankrupt. Then, in 1896, having spent a year at the academy in Brussels, his most productive time began.
Mostly small in scale, Minne's work contains only a few motifs that he explored repeatedly. Best known is Kneeling Youth, which displays influence from Gothic sculpture and the Pre-Raphaelites. His major success throughout Europe began around 1900 but, ironically, by that time he had already created his most important sculptures. Minne deeply influenced artists in Belgium, France, and Germany.
