ARTISTS
Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture
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.
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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.
Artists on show
- Alberto Giacometti
- Alina Szapocznikow
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Andra Ursuta
- Andy Warhol
- Anton Giulio Bragaglia
- Auguste Rodin
- Bruce Nauman
- Carol Rama
- Constantin Brancusi
- Danh Vo
- David Hammons
- David Weiss
- Edgar Degas
- Edward Steichen
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Erin Shirreff
- Eugène Carrière
- Eva Hesse
- Felix González-Torres
- Francesca Woodman
- Francis Bacon
- Georges Seurat
- Giorgio de Chirico
- Giovanni Anselmo
- Giuseppe Penone
- Hannah Villiger
- Hans Josephsohn
- Henry Moore
- Isa Genzken
- Jasper Johns
- Jean Dubuffet
- Juan Muñoz
- Kaari Upson
- Käthe Kollwitz
- Loie Fuller
- Louise Bourgeois
- Luciano Fabro
- Lynda Benglis
- Marcel Duchamp
- Maria Lassnig
- Marisa Merz
- Matthijs Maris
- Medardo Rosso
- Meret Oppenheim
- Miriam Cahn
- Nairy Baghramian
- Odilon Redon
- Olga Balema
- Pamela Rosenkranz
- Paul Cézanne
- Paul Thek
- Peter Fischli
- Phyllida Barlow
- Raymond Duchamp-Villon
- Rebecca Warren
- Richard Serra
- Robert Gober
- Robert Morris
- Rosemarie Trockel
- Senga Nengudi
- Sherrie Levine
- Sidsel Meineche Hansen
- Simone Fattal
- Umberto Boccioni
- Yayoi Kusama
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Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture offers a comprehensive survey of an artist whose influence is matched only by his remarkably persistent anonymity.
Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), an Italian-French sculptor and photographer, influenced art around 1900. His work impacted sculpture history, though he remains less recognized today.
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