Sculpture, i volti della follia - 21 cm - Wax

Study of the faces of madness by Messerschmitt.

Second pair of a series of three.

Pair of bronze busts, studies of works by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (famous Swedish artist and sculptor from the late 18th century), created in the late 20th century by Italian artists during their study of forms.
Lost-wax casting is now increasingly rare.
Patinated wax models in color, study models preparatory for bronze casting.

I 'Faces' by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

The famous character heads by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) represent one of the most enigmatic and radical episodes of 18th-century European sculpture. Created in the final years of his life, these heads depict human faces deformed by extreme grimaces: snarls, spasms, contractions, expressions of pain, ecstasy, or absolute concentration.

For a long time, they were seen as exercises in physiognomy or studies of passions; today, they are considered obsessive investigations into the human interiority, where the face becomes a battleground between body and psyche. Messerschmidt himself declared that he sculpted while looking in the mirror, contracting the muscles of his face, convinced that such gestures protected him from hostile forces that tormented him.

Formally, heads combine an almost classical precision with an unheard expressive violence, anticipating over a century ahead the explorations of Expressionism. The result is a visual paradox: the perfection of modeling coexists with emotional distortion, making Faces not simple portraits, but masks of the soul, sculptures in which identity shatters to reveal the deep truth of the human being.

In Messerschmidt, the face no longer represents the social individual but becomes a site of psychic revelation, foreshadowing a modern view of man as a creature driven by unconscious and contradictory forces. This pair is the second of three completed.

Dimensions:
Brown head: 21x8x9cm
Black head: 12x11x11cm
Origin: Italy
Epoch: end XX sec.

Photos are an integral part of the description.
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