French Belle Époque School, ca. 1870-1880

French Belle Époque school, ca. 1870-1880.
"Girl".
White marble.
Measurements: 81 cm.

Delicate sculpture in white marble, worked in round bulk, representing a girl with curly hair. She wears petticoats that leave her legs uncovered. The term Belle Époque designates the period of European history between the last decade of the 19th century and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. It responds to a nostalgic vision that tended to idealize the pre-1914 past as a paradise lost after the brutal trauma of the First World War. With respect to art, it was the time of development of the three pictorial currents that would mark the 20th century: expressionism, fauvism and cubism, as well as modernism. If in painting and large-scale sculpture the avant-garde dominated, in decorative sculpture and objets d'art the modernist influence in all its forms dominated.