Medardo Rosso

Born June 20, 1858, in Turin; died Mar. 31, 1928, in Milan. Italian impressionist sculptor.

Rosso received no formal artistic training. He worked in Milan, in Venice, and—after 1886—mainly in Paris. In his many-figured compositions and his portraits of children, Rosso sought to render the changeability of nature, to impart picturesquely amorphous and fluid qualities, and to achieve softly modeled forms and a texture receptive to light. Rosso often worked in wax. His sculptures include The Golden Age (1886–87, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris), Laughing Girl (1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig), Motherhood (1889, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Turin), and Veiled Woman (1893, National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome).