Medardo Rosso - Sagrestano - image-1
Medardo Rosso - Sagrestano - image-2
Medardo Rosso - Sagrestano - image-1Medardo Rosso - Sagrestano - image-2

Lot 200 Dα

Medardo Rosso - Sagrestano

Auction 1043 - overview Cologne
28.11.2014, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 50.000 € - 70.000 €
Result: 186.000 € (incl. premium)

Medardo Rosso

Sagrestano
1883/1884

Bronze Height 34.5 cm Unsigned. - With bronze-coloured and greenish patina, blackish in places. Support welded to the inside. Without base.

The bronze cast of the Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan was the first bronze version made from the original plaster model of Medardo Rosso's work known as “Sagrestano” or “Lo Scaccino”, which is preserved in the Museo Rosso, Barzio (cf. Mola/Vittucci 1.8a and 1.8b). Compared to other motifs of the artist, there are scarcely any formal variations on the “Sagrestano”, which also became known as "L'Ivrogne" in Paris. Only few casts have become known. In the final years of the 19th and in the early 20th century the fame of the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso was comparable to that of Auguste Rodin.
“The era of the block which one can walk around is gone forever" wrote Rosso. “My block is to be viewed like a picture, from a specific point, at a certain optical distance, where it reassembles itself with the help of the viewer's retina. It takes on its value, its quality and its beauty only when your eye beholds it in its own light." (cited in: Giovanni Lista, Die Ursprünge des 'italienischen Impressionismus' von Medardo Rosso, in: exhib. cat. Winterthur/Duisburg, op. cit., p. 48)
“At the time when Medardo Rosso decided to move to Paris in 1889, he had achieved complete clarity regarding his ideas. He wanted to demonstrate that he was the founder of 'Impressionist sculpture' or of a new art founded on the 'impression'. 'In the name of the impression ... the art of sculpture was 'to be freed from its eternal conventions'. He was thus the first Italian artist who went to Paris not in order to learn something, but in order to help establish the triumph of a previously unknown expression of modern art from the new Italy, being its only representative of international standing.” (Giovanni Lista, ibid., p. 48/49)

Certificate

With an expertise by Luciano Caramel, Paris, dated 23 February 2005; with an expertise and a confirmation of authenticity by Paola Mola, Milan, dated 15 February 2014 on presentation of the original

Provenance

Private collection, Belgium (since the 1970s)

Literature

Marco Fagioli, Medardo Rosso. Catalogo delle sculture a cura di Marco Fagioli e Lucia Minunno, Florence 1993, cf. no. 12.4, p. 60; Luciano Caramel, Medardo Rosso: Le origini della scultura moderna, exhib. cat. Rovereto/Turin 2004, Milan 2004, cf. p. 104 with illus. (cf. also Mola/Fabio III. 7c); Paola Mola/ Fabio Vittucci, Medardo Rosso, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, a cura di Paola Mola e Fabio Vittucci, Milan 2009, cf. I.8a-I.8d, illus.; see also III.7a-III.7c, p. 351, partly with illus.

Exhibitions

Winterthur/Duisburg 2003 (Kunstmuseum Winterthur/ Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum), Medardo Rosso, cat. no. 11 colour illus. p. 83 (bronze cast of the Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Mailand, inv. 7540)