Medardo Rosso’s Head of a Child

On Wednesday, July 5 – 4 p.m. – the spaces of the Milan headquarters of Cambi Auction House will host the Live Auction Modern and Contemporary Art, one of the most prestigious and eagerly awaited appointments of the house.

In addition to the best artistic production of the 20th century, the catalog features a selection of important works from the late 19th century.

Of particular note is the Head of a Child, 1887-1889 by Medardo Rosso (Turin, 1858 – Milan, 1928).

“Childlike subjects are among Medardo’s most beloved. Child’s Head is a unique work of its kind. It was executed shortly before his move to Paris between 1887 and 1889, when the artist was staying in Milan in a still late Scapigliato climate. It is a concave bronze at the back, sculpted only at the front: the child’s face emerges from a hard but molded, polished, softened material, as if animated by skillful mastery, a peculiarity that places it in space with disruptive verve. With this frontal view of the work, Medardo transforms its classical tangibility in the round.

Materiality dissolves and the viewer becomes the creator of the image he observes: by shifting the point of view, the play of light and shadows change the perception. To complement the bronze, a fragment of shaped marble architecture acts as a supporting base, forming a single body with the portrait, as if it were an integral and necessary part.

Medardo is rebellious, nonconformist, allergic to imposed rules and canons. The Milanese climate is narrow to him, but Paris and the French stylistic features of the time do not fit him either. Rosso is also far from the French Impressionists, more interested in optical phenomena and the decomposition of color, but he experiments with and anticipates new expressive languages.

With his work he can be considered the forerunner of a world whose tangibility is both illusory and elusive. Elusive in its deepest meanings, in its true reasons for being, whose only real certainty is its impermanence.”

Michela Scotti, a specialist in the Modern and Contemporary Art department, explains.