Rieuse

“Nothing is material in space”, Rosso tellingly asserted when he sought to define the deep needs of his poetic world. He did not mean to deny value to sensory experience; on the contrary, pantheistic identification with nature is the mainspring of all his inventions. It signified, rather, opposition to every static vision, to every arbitrary definition, geometric or plastic, that might impair the pulsating vitality of the whole cosmos. Of all the Lombard master's sculptures, the Rieuse is undoubtedly the one closest to a certain French figurative culture between Degas and Rodin, above all for the aristocratic incisiveness of its psychological characterisation and for the resonant depth of its colour. The more exquisitely chromatic scansion determines the lesser luministic corrosion.