Madame X

With absolute consistency, insensitive to the polemics and controversies his art aroused, and even more to the outrageous contempt in which official culture held him, Rosso drew the fundamental premises of his vision to their ultimate consequences. Before our eyes lies a dismaying surface of shadow from which emerges the tremulous and vibrant blade of a living being which, against the mysterious nothingness that presses upon it and in which it will dissolve in a breath, asserts its right to light, that is, to vital essence. The literary premises, the philosophical or vaguely esoteric suggestions are totally absorbed in the supreme stylistic quality: the sculptor modulates and thins the material to the limit of the possible, on the edge of absolute abstraction, spasmodically seeking out its every musical vibration; the equation sculpture-light-painting could be said to have been verified.