Medardo Rosso (1858-1928)
Rosso was born in Turin, but moved with his family to Milan in 1870 where he enrolled at the Brera Academy in 1882. There he produced substantial body of work before being expelled for hitting a fellow student who refused to sign his petition against traditional teaching methods. His work went against the tradition of idealised genre sculpture, Rosso revealing his subjects - the elderly, soldiers, prostitutes - warts and all. Rosso is supposed to have met Rodin for the first time in 1884 when he visited Paris. He returned to Paris in 1889, exhibiting at the Exposition Universelle, and was further introduced into the artistic circles of the city. His sculptures of the 1890s manipulated the medium of wax to produce fleeting, delicate images and some of his most innovative work. Rosso accused Rodin of borrowing from his style without acknowledgement, a claim which led to the end of their friendship around 1898. The last years of his life were spent casting and reworking existing models and he turned increasingly to sketching rather than sculpting.
