Upcoming Events

Medardo Rosso’s London Networks

Lecture – Sharon Hecker

  • 31 October 2018
  • 6:00 – 8:00 pm
  • 18.00-19.30 Paper and Q&A
    19.30-20.00 Drinks and Nibbles
  • Paul Mellon Centre

This lecture will focus on transnationalism in the London art world between 1880 and 1918 through an examination of Medardo Rosso’s experience there. Among the questions I plan to discuss are: why would a foreign artist like Rosso have been eager to penetrate the London art market? What was London’s position in the European/International art scene during these years? What avenues did Rosso have available to him and what are some of the reasons for his choices? In my lecture, I will position Rosso within the development of British interest in French Impressionism, London collectors of foreign art such as the Mond family, British journalists who wrote about Rosso such as Frances Keyzer and and Lady Colin Campbell, foreign dealers who opened branches in London such as Eugene Cremetti, institutional acquisitions of foreign art such as the Victoria and Albert, and the position of foreigners such as Rosso at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers. Finally, I will comment on Rosso’s British legacy today, through the exhibition I co-curated with Julia Peyton-Jones at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London in 2018 and the Courtauld Institute Study Day with Phylida Barlow, Antony Gormley and Richard Deacon.

About the speaker

  • Sharon Hecker_headshot

    Sharon Hecker is an art historian and curator who specializes in modern and contemporary Italian Art. A leading expert on Medardo Rosso, she has authored over 20 publications on the artist, including A Moment’s Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture, awarded the Millard Meiss Prize and recently published in Italian.

    Sharon has curated numerous exhibitions on Rosso, including Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions (Harvard University Art Museums), the retrospective Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form (Pulitzer Arts Foundation) and, with Julia Peyton-Jones, Medardo Rosso: Sight Unseen and His Encounters with London (Galerie Ropac). For her work on Rosso, Sharon has received fellowships from the Getty, Fulbright and Mellon Foundations.

    She also writes about key twentieth century Italian artists such as Lucio Fontana and Luciano Fabro, and is co-author of Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying 'the Knot’.