Medardo Rosso: Italian Sculptor

Rosso attended the Brera Academy for Fine Arts in Milan in 1882, but quickly realized that academic art did not suit him.  In his opinion, academic art was artificial and completely irrelevant to real life.  This opinion reached it’s peak when Rosso decided to organize a protest demanding life models for drawing classes.  After the uprising, he was immediately expelled for his revolutionary behavior.

After his expulsion, Rosso moved to Rome where he lived in poverty, often sleeping amongst the ruins of the Coliseum.  In his state of destitution, Rosso realized his true artistic objectives.  While other artists of his time were focusing on historical, literary and allegorical themes, which had no relevance to the real world, Rosso decided to depict contemporary subjects, including ordinary people dealing with the hardships created by urban life.

During this time, Rosso became acquainted with an avant-garde artistic group called gli Scapigliati.  Scapigliato was a term originally used to describe young people with restless, independent spirits.  Though not initially used to describe artists, it soon became a popular term in literary and artistic circles.  Gli Scapigliati aimed to defy the complacent conformity of the rising bourgeois class.  The painting of gli Scapigliati was characterized by an atmospheric fusion of figure and background, emphasized by softened contours, open brushwork, impasto and interwoven colors.  Rosso was greatly influenced by this style and was inspired to create the naturalistic art that characterizes his work.  The most influential member of gli Scapigliati was the sculptor Giuseppe Grandi.  He influenced Rosso in his use of frayed outlines and bold contours that resulted in the variations of light that gave his work a dramatic effect.

Rosso aimed to create works that spoke to him on a deeper level and in a completely different way, and because of this, he was often met with criticism.  However, Rosso had no intention of pleasing art collectors.  Rosso’s sculptures convey emotions and explore the recesses of the soul.  His figures are extremely expressive as they slowly emerge from the medium in which they are rendered.  It appears as if Rosso is unsure of his end product until he discovers the subject within the wax or bronze and slowly reveals it.

Rosso’s art is different than other artists of his time because his sculptures are based on insubstantiality rather than volume and solidity.  Rosso’s use of insubstantial forms caused critics and collectors to relate his art to Impressionism.  In fact, Rosso came closer than any other sculptor to the methods of Impressionist painters.  However, there is a major difference between Rosso’s work and that of the Impressionists.  While the Impressionists focused on depicting visual stimuli directly from nature, Rosso’s visual sensations are a result of memory and emotion.  Rosso’s sculptures capture the transitory moments that are not directly observed from nature, but drawn from his mind through what he remembered and felt.

In the 1890s, Rosso achieved what he called the “dissolution of matter.”  With works such as Rieuse, Grande Rieuse, Bambino alle Cucine Economiche, Bookmaker, and The Reading Man, he incorporated the surroundings into the subject.  The unrefined, sketchy quality of the sculptures accentuate the light and shadows of the work that were so crucial to understanding his meaning.

Rosso was also able to achieve his characteristic dissolution of matter through the actual process of creating his sculptures.  Rosso was very hands-on when it came to creating his sculptures.  He experimented with his own casting techniques, often incorporating mistakes into his work or stopping at a certain step in the process instead of following it to the end.  His abandonment of traditional processes elevated the sketchy, unfinished quality to the status of a finished work.  The end result was a sculpture that focused more on insubstantial forms than an impermeable, unexpressive, permanent object.  Rosso was extremely dedicated to the research and understanding of this dissolution of matter, often using photography as a means of gaining insight into this unique style.

Rosso preferred to relate his work to photography rather than Impressionism.  His sculptures often appear “blurry,” and it often takes some time to see the subject within the wax or bronze.  This relationship to photography led Rosso to take heavily atmospheric photographs of his work.  The photos often accompanied, or stood in place of, his sculptures to accentuate the photographic quality of his work. 

Rosso was also able to relate his sculptures to paintings.  His early works convey the traditional sculptural presence of being viewed in the round, but his later works fuse the subject with their surroundings and are often only able to be viewed from one angle.  In both the Bookmaker and The Reading Man, there is an obvious plane on which the figures are situated.  The background becomes part of the figure and creates a quality that relates it to painting.

While Rosso never associated himself with any artistic groups, his work was praised and appreciated by fellow artists such as Degas and Rodin.  He had a far-reaching influence on the future generation of artists, particularly the Futurists.  Both contemporary sculptors and painters have been influenced by Rosso’s unique style that has spanned time and ceased to die out.