Maker/Artist
Rosso, Medardo
Italian sculptor, 1858-1928
Rosso was mixing with the 'Scapigliatura', group in Lombardy, from around 1880. From 1882 to 1884, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. He lived in Paris between 1884 and 1886, and then travelled widely, including Vienna and London. He returned to Milan in 1886, then returned to Paris 1889. In Paris he met Rodin, Degas, Émile Zola and the collector Rouart. Rodin may have been influenced by Rosso, and exchanged one of his sculptures, Torso (in bronze) for Rosso's Laughing Woman, 1891. Rosso often worked serially in plaster, which he would cover in wax, and his works were considered a kind of sculptural painting by his contemporaries. He intended that most of his works be viewed from a fixed vantage point, and experimented with photography, creating a secondary body of work derived from the sculptures themselves. He was revered by Boccioni, but Rosso disavowed the Futurist ideas of motion and simultaneity. Comment on works: sculptor
