Medardo Rosso, Bambino malato, 1895, Museo Medardo Rosso, Barzio, Photo: mumok / Markus Wörgötter
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Medardo Rosso
Inventing Modern Sculpture
NEUBAU / 29.03.–10.08.2025 / Curators: Heike Eipeldauer, Elena Filipovic
Sculptor, photographer, and master of artful staging, rival to Auguste Rodin and role model for countless artists: Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) revolutionized sculpture around 1900. Despite his wide-ranging influence, the Italo-French artist remains little known today. This comprehensive retrospective, organized in cooperation with mumok, Vienna, aims to change this, showcasing nearly fifty of his bronze, plaster, and wax sculptures and hundreds of his photographs and drawings to trace the artist’s radical formal, material, and technical explorations.
Rosso’s sculptures are anti-monumental and fundamentally human-scaled, walking a tightrope between presence and dissolution. He created animated surfaces that attempted to capture shifting light and perception—hailed in his day as a sculptural version of Impressionism. He was also deeply invested in modern ideas of reproduction, often using photography as a conceptual model and sculptural tool. Inspired by Rosso’s own display strategies, the exhibition includes work by more than fifty artists from the last hundred years whose concerns and approaches resonate with Rosso’s.
Giovanni Anselmo (1934–2023)
Francis Bacon (1909–1992)
Nairy Baghramian (*1971)
Olga Balema (*1984)
Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023)
Lynda Benglis (*1941)
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916)
Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010)
Arturo Guilio Bragaglia (1893–1962)
Constantin Brâncuși (1876–1957)
Miriam Cahn (*1949)
Eugène Carrière (1849–1906)
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)
Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978)
Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
Raymond Duchamp–Villon (1876–1918)
Luciano Fabro (1936–2007)
Simone Fattal (*1942)
Peter Fischli (*1952)
Loïe Fuller (1862–1928)
Isa Genzken (*1948)
Alberto Giacometti
Robert Gober (*1954)
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996)
David Hammons (*1943)
Eva Hesse (1936–1970)
Jasper Johns (*1930)
Hans Josephson (1936–1970)
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015)
Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
Yayoi Kusama (*1929)
Maria Lassnig (1919–2014)
Sherrie Levine (*1947)
Matthijs Maris (1839–1917)
Sidsel Meineche Hansen (*1981)
Marisa Merz (1926–2019)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920)
Henry Moore (1898–1986)
Robert Morris (1931–2018)
Juan Muñoz (1953–2001)
Bruce Nauman (*1941)
Senga Nengudi (*1943)
Meret Oppenheim (1929–2022)
Guiseppe Penone (*1947)
Carol Rama (1918–2015)
Odilon Redon (1840–1916)
Francesco Rosso (1885–1957)
Auguste Rodin (1840–1916)
Pamela Rosenkranz (*1979)
Richard Serra (1938–2024)
Georges Seurat (1859–1891)
Erin Shirreff (*1975)
Edward Steichen (1879–1973)
Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973)
Paul Thek (1933–1988)
Rosemarie Trockel (*1952)
Kaari Upson (1970–2021)
Andra Ursuţa (*1979)
Hannah Villiger (1951–1997)
Danh Võ (*1975)
Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
Rebecca Warren (*1965)
David Weiss (1946–2012)
James Welling (*1951)
Francesca Woodman (1958–1981)
Close
Medardo Rosso – Inventing Modern Sculpture was created in close collaboration with the Medardo Rosso Estate and is a cooperation with the mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Wien.
