Milan, Galleria Silva dedicates an exhibition to Leonardo Bistolfi, among the greatest sculptors of Symbolism

Galleria Silva in Milan is dedicating an exhibition from October 20 to November 18, 2023 to Leonardo Bistolfi (Casale Monferrato, 1859 - La Loggia, 1933), among the most significant exponents of Italian and European Symbolism. Leonardo Bistolfi. Visionary Symbolist, this is the title of the exhibition, intends to propose itself as a reconnaissance in thevisionary universe of the Piedmontese sculptor. Trained first at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and then at the Albertina in Turin, after a verista and scapigliata-style debut, Bistolfi opened up to Franco-Flemish literary symbolism and the instances of European decadentism. Above all, the artist identified with the concept of the “worker of Beauty,” following an ideological and spiritual line that was essentially that traced by John Ruskin and William Morris.

The Milan exhibition focuses particularly on his Symbolist period in an ideal itinerary that ranges from a plaster version of the Alpe Head for the Monument to Giovanni Segantini in Saint-Moritz(Beauty Liberated from Matter, 1899-1906), probably the most iconic of Bistolfi’s entire production, to the marble La Volontà o L’Industria (c. 1925), from the historical collection of a distinguished personage, linked to Bistolfi by an ancient bond of friendship, and never released from it until today.

Also on view are a reduced-size specimen of the Brayda Cross (1901), very rare to be found in terracotta; the plaque for the Bibliographical Society of Turin (1905-1906), a plaster cast rich in Pre-Raphaelite echoes dedicated to hisfriend sculptor, painter and stage designer Lodovico Pogliaghi; the bronze detail of the right female figure on the plaque for the Cassa di Risparmio di Milano (1906); the funerary plaque for André Gladès (c. 1906-1908), the male pseudonym of Swiss writer Nancy-Marie Vuille, who died at the age of thirty-nine in Geneva in January 1906; the plaster bas-relief of the Cradle for the La Patria monument-ossuary (1906), commemorating the 1706 battle at Madonna di Campagna; the plaster of the reverse side of the model of the medal for the “Florio” sports competitions in Palermo (1907); and, also in plaster, the head of the Death figure of the Abegg funerary monument (1912-1913), placed in the Zurich cemetery. Also, the bronze plaque for Giovanni Faldella and Leonardo Bistolfi (1913), knights of the civil order of Savoy, a significant Bistolfi work by Edoardo Rubino of Turin.

Image: Leonardo Bistolfi, The Will or Industry, detail (ca. 1925)

Milan, Galleria Silva dedicates an exhibition to Leonardo Bistolfi, among the greatest sculptors of Symbolism

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