Sculpture Graces Entrance to Law School
September 16, 2009 —
Le Coureur, (The Runner), a bronze sculpture, adds an artistic counterpoint to the Market Street entrance of the Earle Mack School of Law.
Donated earlier this year by Ambassador Earle Mack, the sculpture is the work of French sculptor, Germaine Richier , (1904-1959), who studied with Louis-Jacques Guigues, an assistant to Auguste Rodin.
The third of six editions, the sculpture was designed in 1954 and cast at a later date.
Le Coureur is a strikingly elongated portrait of a long distance runner lost in his own private space and thoughts.
The sculpture evokes the outdoor nudes of Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy. It demonstrates the determination of an athlete - emitting vigor and energy as he moves through space. Like the sculpture of Rodin, the uneven surface catches the play of motion and changing light.
With its heavily textured surface and its tense febrile energy, Le Coureur seems to suggest the indomitable human spirit animating a highly material form and activating it in accordance with its will into the act of running.
"We’re extremely grateful to Ambassador Mack for providing the law school with such an elegant work of art,” Dean Roger Dennis said.
Ambassador Mack, who graduated from Drexel University in 1959, said he was inspired to give Le Coureur to the law school because runners, like good attorneys, show initiative and endurance.
In 1992, Ambassador Mack was a centennial inductee to The Drexel 100, the university’s most prestigious alumni society, and in 2006, he received an honorary Drexel doctorate.
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