Two Girls Dancing
By Carl Milles
Category: Sculpture
About
This work belongs to the period when Milles was developing his own personal style. The two dancers have distorted forms, yet seem completely realistic and dynamic. They are caught at a moment when they are off-balance yet calm, interacting yet barely touching. It is this frozen sense of motion that makes this sculpture so striking.
Courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden website.
Dimensions: 77″
Year Completed: 1917
Material: Bronze
Owner: Gateway Foundation
About the artist:
Carl Milles
1875-1955
Milles’ work is included in most major sculpture collections. He apprenticed as a cabinetmaker in Sweden and studied sculpture in evening classes. Milles won a scholarship to the Technical School in Stockholm, attended the Sorbonne in Paris, and was eventually admitted to the 1899 Salon. In Paris Milles assisted the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who strongly influenced Milles’ earlier work. In 1931 Milles held an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum, showing 44 pieces, and later became the Artist in Residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. The Millesgården in Sweden then became his studio until his death in 1955. Milles is concerned not only with an expression of the inner vitality of his subjects but with perfecting the expression of this vitality in terms of swift yet closely knit rhythms of line and mass.
