Female Nude with Arms Raised

These three bronze statuettes illustrate in miniature Aristide Maillol’s artistic ambitions and concerns. Over the course of a long career, Maillol concentrated almost exclusively on the theme of the female nude-kneeling, reclining, or standing. Maillol sought the general rather than the particular, the smooth over the rough, and the simple over the complex, striving for a timeless, ideal vision of the female form as an expression of pure beauty.