LIGETI Miklós
1871, Buda – 1944, Budapest

Eve

1897
marble

At the turn of the century, Miklós Ligeti was considered the foremost follower of Rodin in Hungary: when the French master was exhibited in Budapest in 1907, his graphic works were presented at the National Salon in the company of Ligeti’s sculptures.
The finely wrought, smooth nude of Eve emerges from a rough block of marble. The ancestress of mankind holds the fruit of original sin, her untied hair all but becoming one with the rustically hewn rock. In the vein of Rodin’s works, the composition and the surface effects used symbolize the struggle of the soul as it longs to be released from matter. The immediate precursor of the piece is Danaida, Rodin’s statue from 1889. While the French sculptor used an antique theme to represent sin and suffering, Ligeti offered a profane portrayal of a biblical scene. Representations of life in Paradise, the Fall of Man, and the tormented state after being driven from the Garden of Eden, have a distinguished position in his art. Sitting Man (“Paradise Lost”), also presented at our exhibition, could be considered a pendant of Eve with its banished and forsaken Adam.