Medardo Rosso

The Italian artist Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) is, without a doubt, the great pioneer of modern sculpture. His achievement has been recognised – in spite of an historiographical blindness that persisted for decades – by the artists of his time and by leading figures in the art of the 20th century. Degas, Boccioni (who made him a lodestar of Futurist sculpture), Brancusi, Giacometti, Fontana, Anselmo, Thomas Schütte and Juan Muñoz have all acknowledged the lasting significance of his legacy. By means of an important selection of his sculptures, almost all of his photographs and drawings, his writings and a number of his letters, this complete monograph highlights the complexity of Rosso’s creative process, and especially his exploration of the limits of form and materiality, which resulted in his making different versions of his own works. Rosso was not a sculptor in the traditional sense. Eschewing wood and stone, he worked with soft materials such as plaster and wax, which lent