Medardo Rosso Inventing Modern Sculpture

Medardo Rosso, Ecce Puer, 1906, Galleria Russo, Rome.

Sculptor, photographer, and master of artistic staging, rival to Auguste Rodin and a role model for numerous artists: around 1900, Medardo Rosso (1858 in Turin, Italy–1928 in Milan, Italy) revolutionized sculpture. Although exceptionally influential, the Italian-French artist remains too little known today. Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture aims to change this. Featuring around fifty of his sculptures and two hundred and fifty photographs and drawings, the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel offers a rare opportunity to discover Rosso’s oeuvre in a comprehensive retrospective. It invites the audience to learn more about his pioneering activities in turn-of-the-century Milan and Paris as well as the significance of his art in a contemporary perspective, while at the same time providing the basis for a new investigation of the history of modern sculpture.

The exhibition, which was produced in cooperation with the mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) and co-curated by Heike Eipeldauer and Elena Filipovic, helps visitors understand Rosso’s radical explorations of form (and its undoing), material, and technique across media. The extraordinary and lasting impact of his œuvre is revealed by encounters with works by over sixty artists from the past one hundred years including Lynda Benglis, Constantin Brâncuși, Edgar Degas, David Hammons, Eva Hesse, Meret Oppenheim, Auguste Rodin, and Alina Szapocznikow.

The website includes a link to more information about each room.