Sculpture Exhibition During Festival

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 14

Sculpture Exhibition During Festival

A major exhibition of 41 pieces of sculpture, by Rodin and his contemporaries, will be presented in the new gallery of the Canterbury Society of Arts during the Pan Pacific Arts Festival next year.

The chairman of the executive of the festival (Mr H. G. Hay) said last evening that the exhibition had been arranged through the Rothmans Cultural Foundation and Alfred Dunhill, Ltd. It was an extremely valuable exhibition. At present it was touring Australia, where it had received very good reviews. Mr Hay said that Mr S. E. Mair, president of the Society of Arts, who was in Australia, advised him by telephone yesterday that he had nearly completed negotiations to

bring a panel of nine paintings entitled "Riverbend,” by the eminent Australian Sidney Nolan, for display in the society’s gallery during the festival. This set of paintings formed part of a Nolan retrospective exhibition which was attracting crowds in Sydney. It should prove of great public interest during the festival.

The sculpture collection consists of 41 bronzes, 26 by Rodin and the rest by sculptors such as Despiau, Renoir, and Bourdelle, whose working lives overlapped and were mutually influential. Also to the exhibition are eight of Rodin’s original drawings. Most of the bronzes were produced at the end of the nineteenth century. There are four bronzes in the exhibition by Maillol, a painter who turned to sculpture In his forties. Other sculptors represented are Picasso, Carpeaux, Daumier, Gonzalez, and Gemito.