Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture

Exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, Basel, 29 March - 18 August 2025

Sculptor, photographer, art theorist and proto-installer, master of artistic staging, rival of Auguste Rodin and model for many artists: Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) was one of the great pioneers of modernism and revolutionised sculpture. Although he exerted an exceptional influence, the Italian-French artist remains too little known today.

This exhibition catalogue presents a complete retrospective of the artist, with over fifty sculptures and a wide selection of photographs, photocollages and drawings. It follows the relational thinking of Medardo Rosso, who frequently exhibited his work alongside comparable works, and contextualises his work with selected works by some fifty artists - including Francis Bacon, Nairy Baghramian, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Edgar Degas, Alberto Giacometti, David Hammons, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris and Andy Warhol - who have a direct or indirect resonance with him.