Medardo Rosso, now thirty-one, is fascinated by…
1889 CE
As in the work of the Impressionist painters and also that of his fellow sculptor Rodin, explicit detail is usually subordinated to texture, suggestion, and effect.
He works in traditional media of bronze and plaster, yet also models his works in wax over plaster.
Before Rosso, this technique, a preparatory stage in the lost-wax bronze-casting process, had rarely been used to create finished artworks.
Beeswax, which captures and holds light, further dematerializes Rosso's sculptural surfaces, which are already abstract and atmospheric and often have a hazy quality.
The face of his poignant Sick Boy (c. 1889; Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden) is delicately rendered, but the sculpture's surface is smoothed and fuzzy, as if seen in little light, suggesting the atmosphere of a sickroom in which curtains are drawn, as well as the faded quality of the boy's life force.
The conveyed sense that the boy cannot keep his head erect implies weakness that may result in decline and death.
After his first major exhibition, at the Exposition Universelle, Rosso's success grows steadily.
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West Europe
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