Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 3 - June 20, 2004
The Nasher Sculpture Center presents Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions. This exhibition is the first major survey in the United States in 40 years devoted to the work of Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), whose revolutionary innovations played a key role in the birth of modern sculpture. Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions features 20 sculptures, including 6 works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, and offers an intimate exploration of Metardo Rosso’s working process and innovations.
Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions focuses on multiple versions of five sculptures spanning Medardo Rosso’s mature career. The works are Aetas aurea (The Golden Age), 1886–87; Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891; Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93; Bookmaker, c. 1894; and Ecce puer (Behold the Child), 1906. Each of the works is represented by three or four distinct castings in wax, plaster, and bronze, showcasing Rosso’s pioneering experimentation with materials and casting techniques. Medardo Rosso was intimately involved in creating the various casts of these works at a time when such work was commonly left to foundry technicians.
Medardo Rosso’s extensive exploration of techniques and materials exemplifies how art was transformed on a broad scale during the late 19th century. Medardo Rosso replaced realistic detail with vigorous, sketchy modeling, and he varied media. Rather than cast his original clay models as bronzes to be carefully finished, Rosso arrested the lost-wax method of bronze casting in midcourse, saving the wax shells as finished works. This radical innovation, which elevated wax to the status of bronze, triggered a career-long exploration of sculptural production and reproduction. Rosso wrung endless variations from his original clay models, casting and recasting them in wax, plaster, and barely finished bronze, leaving the accidents and artifacts of the casting process visible in the final products. Through his experiments, similar to those of Auguste Rodin during the same period, Rosso expanded the conceptual and expressive possibilities of sculpture and influenced the works of such modern sculptors as Umberto Boccioni and Constantin Brancusi.
“With six sculptures by Medardo Rosso in the Nasher Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center is an ideal venue for this important exhibition,” said Director Steven Nash. “Like the Picasso exhibition currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is a very focused, important exhibition that draws from and complements works in the Nasher Sculpture Center.”
Medardo Rosso’s output comprises fewer than 50 primary sculptures, all of which he created between 1881 and 1906. For the remaining 22 years of his career, Medardo Rosso devoted himself to recasting these primary sculptures, producing more than 400 variations in plaster, wax, and bronze. Medardo Rosso’s working process and experimentation can be studied in the variations of Bambino ebreo (Jewish Boy), c. 1892–93. Bambino ebreo served as a sort of business card for Medardo Rosso. He made many wax versions of it and gave them as gifts to patrons, critics, curators, and friends. The two wax versions in the exhibition reveal very different degrees of detail. The two bronze versions are even farther apart; one reveals Medardo Rosso’s almost painterly use of the whitish casting material, while the other is traditional in its finish and patina.
The exhibition also includes three versions of one of the largest busts Medardo Rosso ever made, Grande rieuse (Large Laughing Woman), 1891, demonstrating the variety he achieved by casting the same model in different ways. In the bronze version, Medardo Rosso took the unusual step of casting the plaster madreforma, or “mother mold,” as part of the finished work.
MEDARDO ROSSO (1858–1928)
Born in Turin, Italy in 1858, Medardo Rosso moved with his family to Milan when he was 12. After serving in the Italian military, he began studying painting and sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan in 1882. Medardo Rosso’s artistic breakthrough came in 1883 when he made his first sculptures in wax. In 1889 he settled in Paris, where he developed a friendship with Auguste Rodin. Medardo Rosso exhibited his work widely in Europe and participated in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. He also participated in Salons in Paris in 1904 and in London in 1906, where he completed his last sculpture, Ecce puer (Behold the Child).
A fully illustrated catalogue developed by Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and co-published with Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition. It includes essays by Harry Cooper; Sharon Hecker; Henry Lie, director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard; and Derek Pullen, head of sculpture conservation at the Tate in London.
Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions
164 pages, 8x10 in., 2003
107 color and 5 b&w illustrations
Published by the Harvard University Art Museums
Distributed by Yale University Press
ISBN 1-891771-31-0
Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions is organized by Harry Cooper, curator of modern art for Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, with Sharon Hecker, an independent scholar based in Milan.
The exhibition was organized by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. The Nasher Sculpture Center is the final venue for Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions, following exhibitions at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum (July 19 - October 26, 2003) and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri (November 21, 2003 - February 15, 2004).
NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org
