FROM THE GROTESQUE TO THE BEAUTIFUL

For a while now I have been in my Secession period (see http://discovmaggsie.blogspot.com/2015/06/dolce-vita-from-liberty-to-italian.html).

Vir Temporis Acti  , ALSO HOMME DU PASSE _ 1924
One of my art magazines had praised the sculptor Aldofo Wildt and there I found he too had been part of this period for a very short while. The sculpture that I saw on posters around Paris is not exactly enticing and yet there was something very modern about it

I decided to go along. 

Depending which site you look up he is either Italian or Swiss. For sure he was born in 1863 into a family of limited means. I’m surprised that his birthplace is not so clear. He left school very early to work as an apprentice; first of all a hairdresser and then as a goldsmith. The two professions are hardly related. At 11 he became an apprentice in the workshop of Giuseppe Grandi, so by now was living in Italy. His ability to work with marble made him quite famous by the time he was 18.He died in 1931.

There is something very mystical about his work. So many of his sculptures are highly polished marbles of remarkable translucence. There are many faces which are tortured. Even grotesque in their exaggerated pathos. On the other hand, his religious work is refined. His drawings out of this world.

Masque de la douleur -also autoportrait - 1909

Un Rosaire - 1915-1917

Lumiere also Luce - 1920

Madonna - 1924

Fil d'or - 1927


The Conception - 1921

La Famille - 1922

Veuve - 1892


Les Péchés mortels -  1913

Maternité - 1914

Voleur d'âme - 1915

La Musique et La Poésie - 1920


























Margherita Sarfatti commanded a sculpture of her companion, Mussolini - which was vandalized in the period when Fascism broke up in Italy.

Mussolini 1923
You can’t help but like his work. It is so touchable but when I tried, you know what happened. No photographs again. This time I bought the catalogue. There is a lot about him on Internet, but I don’t think too many people know his work. This was the first time there had been a retrospective in France. Surely I have seen his work. There was certainly reference to him in the Dolce Vita (see above). Looking at the extraordinary contrast between the grotesque and the mysterious enchanted me.




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