Lady with a Black Hat

Melli's sculptures are few, and all were executed in the period of the so-called Roman Secession (1913-15); later he devoted himself entirely to painting, developing to the full his sense of inner monumentality. Nevertheless he made a remarkable contribution to sculptural research by indicating independent solutions in contrast both to the exasperated luminism of Medardo Rosso and to the frenzied dynamism of Boccioni, who in the same years was consuming in a dazzling experience the revolutionary overthrow of all traditional visual concepts. The synthetically squared volumes of this portrait of a lady, even though some solutions seem reminiscent of Futurist procedures, show quite different intentions; the gauged relationship between positive and negative volumes, the clear distinction of light and shadow, point towards a definition of form in which inner investigation asserts itself with austerity and composure, and the “colour” has the solidified intensity of a plastic element.