La Pleureuse (The Mourner), Giuseppe Grandi

Exhibition Label:
"Corpus," Apr-2012, Kris Ercums
This bronze figure of a mourner, weeping, relates to a long European tradition of mourning sculptures, and it may be a model for a larger figure, possibly a tomb sculpture. Enveloped in grief, the weeping figure is barely visible beneath the cloak. The sketchy quality of the bronze aligns the sculpture with the Impressionists in France, who in similar fashion used paintbrushes to capture fleeting, modern-life moments. Working at the same time as the Impressionists, in the 1870s, Giuseppe Grandi’s sculptures stem from a sense of disillusionment that pervaded artists and society in Milan during this period. A disheveled quality characterizes the feeling of this bronze, suggesting not only an avant-garde stance but also a sense of movement beyond the confines of a bronze statue, as if the sculpture were also part painting, and could tremble in time.