Sale 2532 - 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, March 5, 2020

281 c ARISTIDE MAILLOL La Vague . Woodcut on thin yellow wove paper, 1895-98. 165x215 mm; 6 1 / 2 x7 5 / 8 inches, wide margins. An artist’s proof in the first state (of 2), aside from the edition of 60. Signed with the artist’s monogram in pencil, lower right. A superb, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce and early woodcut. Born in a small fishing village in the French Pyrenees, Maillol (1861-1944) moved to Paris in 1885 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Despite training with acclaimed painters Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889) and Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), he quickly became disillusioned by the restrictive academic environment. In 1894, he joined the Nabis , a group of young artists inf luenced by the decorative elements of Art Nouveau and Impressionism, and began exhibiting with them. Maillol became known for his stylized, f lattened depictions of women, like the present woodcut; as well as for his modernized female nude sculptures treated with classical emphasis. Guérin 8. [12,000/18,000]