Luciano Fabro

Arte Povera, which developed during the second half of the ‘Sixties simultaneous to analogous international movements such as Process Art and Conceptual Art, proposed an artistic working methodology that, establishing a relationship among various languages and emphasizing an “asystematic way of living,” radically affirmed the need to relate to primary elements and non-traditional materials that might directly express natural energy and ideas. “Arte Povera in the Collection” inaugurates the “Project for Modern and Contemporary Art” promoted by the CRT Foundation as part of its institutional activities to advance and protect art, in order to enhance the modern and contemporary art system in Piedmont and to support synergies and the international role of the museum hub in Turin, through the acquisition of groups of historical works for the collections of Castello di Rivoli and the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino. On the occasion of this exhibition, the acquisition of Arte Povera works dating from 1967 to 1971, from the collection of Margherita Stein, has made it possible to present a complete view of the genesis of these poetics and, by placing this group of works alongside works already belonging to the permanent collections of the two museums, to document more recent outcomes through the individual paths of the movement’s leading figures.

With his figures, Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso succeeded in contributing decisively to the development of modern sculpture. The artist's points of focus were the moment when the sculpture was perceived and the fusion of the figure with its surroundings. He worked almost exclusively on portrait heads; wax became a substitute for bronze, allowing him to work the surface of the sculpture to its finest perfection and to use different hues, adequate expression for the fleetingness of the apparition. And they are fleeting--one hardly knows if the portrayed faces are receding from the sculpture's surface or pushing up against it. In Paris, where Rosso spent the greater part of his life, he found understanding friends in Edgar Degas and the collector Henri Rouart, while friendship with Rodin miscarried because of the rivalry between the two sculptors. At around the turn of the century, Rosso's sculptures could be seen at many large European exhibitions; the Futurists would soon hold him up as a model. This publication, a scholarly survey of the artist's work, makes clear that although Rosso limited himself to very few motifs, their many different versions translated into independent works.