ROSSO, Medardo

An Italian sculptor who came to Paris to work in 1884 and settled there in 1889, frequenting Rodin and Carri�re, Medardo Rosso was a most unusual artist. He was unusual in his taste for wax, in his choice of subjects and in his treatment of surfaces. He is the only sculptor to be connected with Impressionism as his work conveys the notion of something glimpsed indistinctly.

This strange piece is thought to represent the artist’s wife embracing their young son. The technical execution is typical of Rosso’s work: he poured liquid wax into the hollow of a plaster mould, doubtless created from a clay original. The wax shell thus formed was reinforced with plaster and a metal stem added so that it could be hung vertically, as Rosso intended it to be viewed. The marks of workmanship such as seams and drips are deliberately left visible, which was a highly innovative approach for the period.

The splendid wax sculpture Aetas Aurea is one of the three versions that Medardo Rosso dedicated to the double portrait of his wife Giuditta Pozzi with their son Francesco. In this work, he explored the theme of the mother kissing her baby, but instead of creating a sculpture in the round, he chose to model only the front surface, neglecting the back and concentrating on the effects of light on the surfaces. The two faces are depicted as blending into one another, accentuating the intensity of the relationship between mother and son.

This bust, a portrait of six-year-old Alfred Mond, is a fleeting model that captures the fluidity of the child’s head and dispenses with showing any detailed work on the face. Rosso’s preferred material was soft wax, which was more suitable for his particular artistic designs than any other material. The subsequent bronze casting limits the meaningfulness of Rosso’s small sculpture somewhat. The 20th century was slow to appreciate this artist; in his day, Rosso’s work were seen more as a bozzetti, as three-dimensional designs, rather than as works of art. However, he was much admired by Rodin, among others.

A rebellious character who as a student protested against traditional teaching methods at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, Rosso became an artist with a highly personal artistic language. His bent for naturalistic, contemporary subjects is evident in this psychological study of a laughing woman whose bust-length figure is embedded into her environment. A dematerialization through variations of light and atmosphere achieves a painterly, impressionistic quality. The work was executed during the artist’s prolonged stay in Paris where he made contacts with the Post-Impressionists.

After taking part in the Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti in Rome in 1883, Rosso found an alternative to the formal sculptural solutions inherited from tradition in such works as The Concierge. These were no longer sculptures in the round but were images on the border between sculpture and painting. The figures appear to be fused with their surroundings as a result of the dissolution of contours and the abolition of empty spaces, and, to be correctly understood, it is necessary to view them from a single angle.

Like the Impressionist painters of his time, Rosso sought to capture the fleeting and ephemeral qualities of light. However, he did not work directly from nature. His images were created from memory and emotion.