The Concierge

To avoid misunderstandings in grasping the exceptional poetics of Medardo Rosso, one must bear well in mind, on the one hand, the Piedmontese artistic milieu of the second half of the century and, on the other, the bohemian velleities of the Milanese Scapigliatura, which provide the immediate background to Rosso's activity. Now, both would lead to a definition that clearly conflicts with the hasty label with which people seek to classify Rosso's sculpture: Impressionism. For while Impressionism, strictly speaking, is a decidedly naturalistic vision, founded on an optimistic and pantheistic adherence to the facts of nature, Rosso, from his first independently conceived works, instead clearly qualifies as a continuer of that subtle, somewhat utopian and irrational spiritualism which had already informed the school of the Lyon landscape painters and, in Italy, Fontanesi.