Aristide Maillol was an artist with grand ideas. His beautiful and harmonious sculptures - primarily of the female nude - hark back to the ideals of classical Greek art, stressing the static and monumental qualities of the human form, exquisite in their simplicity. But this simplicity also points towards a more modern artistic view, an art which paved the way for abstraction and modernism. Widely regarded as along the greatest of twentieth-century sculptors, his work appears in museums all over the world.

Yet no book has been devoted to the artist for some thirty years. Bertrand Lorquin's monograph redresses this neglect, examining in detail the artist's life, and illustrating and describing the main body of his work.

The book places Maillol for the first time in a chronological context, giving a clear picture of his evolution as an artist and intriguing insight into the thoughts and motivations behind his work. Taking us through each stage of his life, Lorquin shows the development from the early work - oil paintings and wooden sculptures - to the magnificent, life-size sculptures of his mature years, illustrating the text throughout with examples from every period, as well as photographs of the artist at work.

Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of his death, this is a timely reassessment of an important twentieth Century artistic figure, an intimate and illuminating portrait of Maillol which is long overdue.