La morte

Mitchell Wolfson Jr. 2007 Genova - donazione

Bistolfi, Leonardo

87.1111.6.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 72.5; Larghezza: 63; Profondità: 50

gesso

A promoter of the concept of the ‘socialism of beauty’, derived from the teachings of William Morris, Leonardo Bistolfi advocated the idea of the redevelopment of life and the democratisation of artistic enjoyment through the integration of all the arts into a single global project (Gesamtkunstwert, according to the German definition), which had been theorised by Henry Van de Velde as follows: ‘[...] we cannot admit any distinction aimed at establishing the superiority of one of the aspects of art, nor of one of its expressions over the others’.
In the preparatory sketches ‘Life and Death. Towards Light' made by Bistolfi for the Abegg tomb in Zurich, similarities can be discerned with the image of “L'Alpe” from his funeral monument for Giovanni Segantini in Saint-Moritz (1899-1906). In the seductive female figure, the artist's adherence to the stylistic characteristics of Liberty emerges. "Liberty" is the term with which, inspired by the name of Arthur Lasenby's London atelier Liberty, the art nouveau style was defined in Italy.