Maestro Arturo Toscanini 💫

 

Adolfo Wildt: Il maestro Arturo Toscanini. Marble sculpture from 1924, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome.

A very similar copy is in the Teatro della Scala, in Milan.

Wildt's fame, achieved with his works from 1890-92, paid the price of his adherence to fascism (as also happened to other Italian artists of the time, today revalued) and that his sculptures were very appreciated from the beginning in Germany, but since the 1980s many art critics are rediscovering his works in bronze and marble, also defining him as the last of the Symbolists.

Starting from the romantic background of the late nineteenth century, Wildt devoted himself to the art of a sculpture strongly influenced by the Secession and Art Nouveau, characterized by complex symbolism and an almost gothic definition of its forms.

The extreme smoothness of the marble surfaces gives his busts an absolute purity and a plastic integrity that he has always tried to reconcile with the dramatic feeling of an almost paroxysmal intensity: for this reason, Wildt is on the threshold of Expressionism which is shown above all in the painful and shocked expression of his Self-portrait of 1909. 

Prolific and much loved by D'Annunzio, he also taught at the Brera Academy from '26, and among his students was Lucio Fontana. 

Adolfo Wildt (Milan, March 1, 1868 - Milan, March 12, 1931) was an Italian sculptor, designer and medallist, member of the Academy of Italy since March 1929.

Very well known to the public is the sculpture of 1893-94 "Vedova" or Atte, exhibited at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, for which it is thought his young wife posed and which has already been shared a short time ago in this album.