Gloria Moure

The Italian artist Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) is, without a doubt, the great pioneer of modern sculpture. His achievement has been recognised – in spite of an historiographical blindness that persisted for decades – by the artists of his time and by leading figures in the art of the 20th century. Degas, Boccioni (who made him a lodestar of Futurist sculpture), Brancusi, Giacometti, Fontana, Anselmo, Thomas Schütte and Juan Muñoz have all acknowledged the lasting significance of his legacy. By means of an important selection of his sculptures, almost all of his photographs and drawings, his writings and a number of his letters, this complete monograph highlights the complexity of Rosso’s creative process, and especially his exploration of the limits of form and materiality, which resulted in his making different versions of his own works. Rosso was not a sculptor in the traditional sense. Eschewing wood and stone, he worked with soft materials such as plaster and wax, which lent themselves to the representation of ephemeral effects and subtle forms. He produced multiple versions of his works, continually varying the forms and materials. For Rosso, sculpture and the visualisation of sculpture were inextricably linked, and photography, which came to constitute the definitive movement from the point of view of the spectator, enabled him to arrive at his ultimate goal: the attaining of insubstantial form. As Luciano Fabro observed, in an inspiring interview he gave in April 1996, "[till then] sculpture had been about taking away from or adding matter to a nucleus; Rosso goes further by proposing that when the gaze passes over something, remove or add matter, remove and add subject".

From October 1989 until September 1995, fourteen site specific projects found their home in the city of Barcelona. Created by Christian Boltanski, John Cage, Jan Dibbets, Rodney Graham, Rebecca Horn, Jannis Kounellis, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Aureli Ruiz & José Maldonado, Ulrich Rückriem, and Lawrence Weiner, the works provided a significant overview of important installation work of the second half of the 20th century. This book documents the intense experience of the project, which was organized by the Espai Poblenou Foundation. 128 illustrations

The book structure is intrinsically related to ideas underpinning the attitude of Francis of Assisi that are still highly topical: human dignity in poverty, the revaluation of sensible knowledge as opposed to the hegemony of purely instrumental reason, the preservation of nature - entropy, walking as a means to knowledge (appreciating the nomadic condition in a world that is anchored in the sedentary), the condition of the landscape as the human condition (appreciation of reality, like a vast, complex and unstable loop to which nothing can be external). Of course, the list of contemporary artist (35) that sent its works and writings is invaluable: from Francis Alys, Lothar Baumgarten, Cardiff&Miller and Roni Horn to Annika Kars, Amar Kanwar, Anthony McCall, and Lawrence Weiner. The book includes especial commissioned works by Francis Alys, Tacita Dean, Jimmie Durham, Richard Long, Anthony McCall, Perejaume, and Lawrence Weiner. Beautifully designed and produced, the book includes some inserts especially done by the artists