In Vienna a retrospective of Medardo Rosso's sculpture in dialogue with artists he influenced

From October 18, 2024 to February 23, 2025, Mumok - Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna is hosting the retrospective Medardo Rosso. Inventing Modern Sculpture, dedicated to Medardo Rosso (Turin, 1858 - Milan, 1928), a great Italian artist considered among the greatest exponents of modern sculpture. Curated by Heike Eipeldauerm, the exhibition will bring together for the occasion about fifty sculptures and a wide selection of photographs, collages and drawings. These works will be in dialogue with works by artists who were directly or indirectly influenced by Medardo Rosso, such as Jean-Siméon Chardin, Edgar Degas, Constantin Brâncuși, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Marisa Merz, and Phyllida Barlow, with the aim of delving into Medardo Rosso’sprocessual and repetitive yet innovativeapproach.

With the exception of a year of study at the Brera Academy in Milan, Medardo Rosso was self-taught. Born in Turin in 1858, he resided permanently in Paris from 1889. There he formed a friendship with Auguste Rodin, whose collaborator and later rival he became. Both artists sought to radically redefine sculpture. Designed in the spirit of a fluid idea of modernism and shaped by philosopher Henri Bergson’s revolutionary concept of space and time, Rosso’s sculptures transcended classical concepts of solidity and durability in favor of modern concepts of the transitory andimmaterial. His efforts to dynamically fuse the figure withits surroundings and to inscribe this permanent malleability of matter make Rosso a precursor of Futurism.

Throughout his artistic evolution, Medardo Rosso relied on a highly selective visual repertoire, to which he added nothing new from 1906 until his death. Several times he returned to this repertoire, repeated it using various materials, intensified and deepened it. For his sculptures the artist often resorted to bronze, wax, or plaster, materials hitherto used in the sculptural process only in preproduction. He also used painterly compositional means such as pigment coating to achieve shifting tones of color and light or experimented with contaminations in his working process. He also developed reflections on sculpture and the relationship between the figure and its environment through the medium of photography, systematically including it in his creative process from 1900 onward.

Rosso saw the surrounding space as integral to the sculptural effect. The way his works were displayed and presented shifted more and more to the center of his attention. The artist was also adept at staging public performances of his sculptural process: he repeatedly did figure-melting shows in his studio, thus emphasizing, unlike most of his contemporaries, his dual role as artist and craftsman.

His intense exhibition activity took him all over Europe, and above all he was often in the habit of making his works dialogue with those of his contemporaries, such as Rodin, or with copies of works from other periods of art history.

120 years after his last exhibition in Vienna, Mumok now takes up the principle of Medardo Rosso’s comparative vision to highlight the innovative nature of his experimental approach, juxtaposing historical and contemporary works by other artists from the museum’s holdings as well as from international collections.

These are the artists who will be placed in dialogue with Medardo Rosso’s works: Francis Bacon, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Umberto Boccioni, Katinka Bock, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncuși, Eugène Carrière, John Chamberlain, Giorgio de Chirico, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Jimmie Durham, Luciano Fabro, Jean Fautrier, Loïe Fuller, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, David Hammons, Eva Hesse, Roni Horn, Jasper Johns, Hans Josephson, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul Klee, Yayoi Kusama, Sherrie Levine, Édouard Manet, Adolph Menzel, Marisa Merz, Robert Morris, Juan Muñoz, Bruce Nauman, Senga Nengudi, Giuseppe Penone, Odilon Redon, Auguste Rodin, Hercules Pietersz Seghers, Richard Serra, Georges Seurat, Erin Shirreff, Alina Szapocznikow, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, Tatiana Trouvé, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Rebecca Warren, James Welling.

The many artists who refer directly to Medardo Rosso or whose works resonate with the latter reveals the continuing relevance of sculpture as an artistic practice at a time when reconsidering the relationship between material bodies and the technologically connected environment has become increasingly important.

The exhibition is made possible through a collaboration with Medardo Rosso Estate. From March to August 2025, the exhibition will be transferred to the Kunstmuseum Basel.

For info: https://www.mumok.at/en/

In Vienna a retrospective of Medardo Rosso's sculpture in dialogue with artists he influenced

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