Rodin, the Centennial Exhibition, Grand Palais

Built for the 1900 World Fair, The Grand Palace on the Champs-Élysées, with its classicist stone facade and art nouveau iron-and-glass roof, is a wonder in itself. The double delight, then, is this show to mark the centenary of the 1840-born sculptor August Rodin’s death.

Rodin’s own story reflects perhaps the persevering spirit of Paris itself. Plagued by poor vision, he struggled at school and found refuge in drawing. As a teenager, he applied three times to study at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts and three times he was rejected.

Still by the end of the late 1800s he had become “the father of modern sculpture”, primarily through his determination to dramatise the human body.

Sculptural tradition had previously sought to represent the outside world — famous figures or scenes from history, literature and myth; Rodin carved emotion.

“The artist simply gives shape to his own dreams,” he wrote.

He saw the human body as a perfect piece of architecture, as carefully designed and as awesome as the grandest cathedrals.

He spoke of the “concert of forms” and called the human body “a temple that marches”.

The exhibition has more than 200 of his own pieces on display alongside other artworks of the time — including drawings by Klimt and Picasso. Whereas those masters made delicious, licentious, reclining women in pen and ink, Rodin raised up similar figures in 3D, their hair billowing out of bronze.

His figures — embracing, twisting, explosive in stillness, screaming anguish in a clenched hand or passion in a taut shoulder — all seem smooth as chalk, the details of flesh and motion so intricate that it’s astonishing, and somehow entirely possible that these were real people struck down by some divine malady and instantly turned to stone. Until July 31. See grandpalais.fr/en