The Artwork of the month - May 2021

Created in 1909, Maschera del dolore is one of Wildt's most famous sculptures and was made in several versions. The inscription on the background gold - ADOLFO WILDT DALL'ANNO MCMVI AL MCMVIII, followed by three crosses - refers to a three-year period of deep personal crisis, viewed by the artist as an existential and professional "calvario", when Wildt only produced copies of his past pieces.

In a letter written at the painter Siviero in 1915, the artist speaks of this self-portrait, saying that "it marked the end of my three years of pain and with this small but great work I found my way". The road referred at this point is the way of a more distinct and strong expressionist language that Wildt, after a scapigliata and verista period following in the steps of the masters Grandi and Villa, arrived at, also thanks to the important contacts with the central European artistic environment and in particular with the German secessionist and expressionist culture.
An expert in the fine applied arts and a celebrated executor of funerary monuments, Wildt is the creator of L'arte del marmo (1921), describing his passion for sculpture and the secrets of his craft in a fascinating narrative full of references to the art of the past.
The wealth of the artist's figurative culture can be seen here in the careful treatment of the surfaces, the deformation of the physical features and the choice of different materials. These elements, combined with learned references to Michelangelo (there is apparently a reference to the mask that accompanies the allegorical figure of the Notte in the monument to Giuliano, Duca di Nemours in the tombe medicee), distinguished Wildt by a single, distinct language of an unsettling and beautiful quality.

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