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Lot Essay
Dina Vierny has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Bertrand Lorquin, in his 1994 monograph on Maillol (loc. cit.), discusses the sculptor's choice of subjects, commenting on La pensée and another work from 1930, Femme accroupie: 'Their pose refers only secondarily to reality. In each case, the sculpture is a small block of bronze articulating solid forms which verge on pure abstraction. These works show us how far Maillol's art has evolved since his first Nabi statuettes. The beauty they express in almost abstract terms stems from plastic experiments based on a single idea - the idea of pushing simplification to an extreme. It was this quest for ever greater simplification that led Maillol to return again and again to the same subjects, the same themes; it was this which allowed him to spend ten years working on a sculpture.'
Bertrand Lorquin, in his 1994 monograph on Maillol (loc. cit.), discusses the sculptor's choice of subjects, commenting on La pensée and another work from 1930, Femme accroupie: 'Their pose refers only secondarily to reality. In each case, the sculpture is a small block of bronze articulating solid forms which verge on pure abstraction. These works show us how far Maillol's art has evolved since his first Nabi statuettes. The beauty they express in almost abstract terms stems from plastic experiments based on a single idea - the idea of pushing simplification to an extreme. It was this quest for ever greater simplification that led Maillol to return again and again to the same subjects, the same themes; it was this which allowed him to spend ten years working on a sculpture.'