18.10.2024 – 23.02.2025
The mumok is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to the hitherto little-noticed work of the Italian-French artist and craftsman, art theorist and proto-installation artist, master of high-profile stagings and competitor of Auguste Rodin with around 50 sculptures as well as a large selection of photographs, photo collages and drawings – and in doing so is also building on the museum’s earliest collections. Contrary to the burgeoning nationalism of his time, Rosso saw himself as a ‘European anarchist’ (Jehan Rictus) who was ‘born in a train’, as he repeatedly emphasised. The exhibition – curated by Heike Eipeldauer – begins with an intensive analysis of Rosso’s processual and repetitive approach, with which the artist defied all conventions of traditional sculpture. Rosso’s groundbreaking and hermetic work is then opened up and brought into a comprehensive dialogue through a concise selection of works by other artists – including Edgar Degas, Constantin Brâncuși, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Marisa Merz and Phyllida Barlow – who resonate directly or indirectly with Rosso. The show follows the principle of not exhibiting Rosso’s own artistic practice alone, but always in ‘conversation’ with others.
Medardo Rosso – The invention of modern sculpture
18.10.2024 – 23.02.2025
mumok
Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna
www.mumok.at
