Torso di giovanetto

"Torso di giovanetto" constitutes a singular invention in the oevre of Arturo Martini, and is even more sursprising for a sculptor who was usually so mindful of narrative: not only renouncing the setting, but also limiting himself to a male back without arms, and with only half of its head and buttocks. However, this choice was only superficially anti-narrative, and the artist would explain his intentions: while modelling a back, he had realised that the muscles did not onlt exist as such, but also "as a panoramic description of a world, that lies between the ribs, mountains and valleys". The mutilated back thus acquired a narrative dimension, offering itself almost as a natural landscape. Although an undoubtedly original solution, the idea of truncation was not a novelty, Adolfo Wildt, amongst the Italians, had already used amputation for anti-realist concepts. However, in "Torso di giovanetto", with its unusual splitting of the head beyond the hair line, one cannot ignore the influence of the "Psiche di Capua", that Martini would see at the Museo Archeologico in Naples during his trip to Palinuro in Campania, of 1927. Executed in Vado Ligure, the work was first exhibited in Florence in 1932, on the occasion of Martini's solo exhibition at Palazzo Ferroni. From the original terracotta model, at the Tate Gallery in London since 1933, the sculptor created a gesso mould so as to obtain seven further editions in terracotta; later he modified the version belonging to Raffaello Giolli, adding a piece of the buttock and side in order to obtain a greater sense of three-dimensionality: from this second version five bronzes would be cast by the MAF foundry in Milan for Giolli's children, one of which was acquired by the Milanese Civiche Raccolte in 1953. [Massimo De Sabbata]