Monuments without Idols
Monuments without Idols
This chapter traces four significant rejections that marked Medardo Rosso's early career in Italy. He made two revolutionary monument proposals for Giuseppe Garibaldi, but the Italian establishment immediately rejected them. In these public projects, Rosso dared to criticize what he saw as falsely reassuring nation-building myths. Rosso also was expelled from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, and his first radical funerary monument, La Riconoscenza, was removed from the local cemetery for its frank and emotionally explicit portrayal of mourning and death. The chapter argues that Rosso adopted an artistic language of protest to experiment with new forms of expression that rejected the heroic idioms of traditional sculpture. His original antiheroic monument proposals expressed far-reaching ideas that aimed to revolutionize the concept of the monument in modern times.
Keywords: Medardo Rosso, Giuseppe Garibaldi, nation-building myths, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, La Riconoscenza, traditional sculpture, antiheroic monument
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