Self-Portrait

Grandi's researches had great influence in the artistic milieu which in Milan brought together personalities from various regions, Italian and otherwise. Rarely, however, was his lesson fully understood, the essence of his sculpture, which tended to infuse light into the interior of the plastic masses, to shake them and enliven them from within; instead people were content with a surface painterliness, which, however, did not affect the traditional conception of “statuary”, or else broke it up into a fragmentary, anecdotal sketchiness. Nevertheless, a much more disenchanted habit of investigating phenomenal reality had been established, and the certainty of the predominance of the subjective contribution to vision had been acquired. Bazzaro's Self-Portrait undoubtedly has a naturalistic root, but the light that furrows and overturns the surfaces enriches it with so many allusions as to create an autonomy totally free from reality.