The Mother, fragment of The Family

Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931)
1922, Marble

In 1922, after seven years of drawings and studies, Wildt presented the marble sculpture entitled La Famiglia (The Family), measuring four metres in height, at the Venice Biennale. The face of a woman shown here is a fragment of that group, once composed of the figure of a man and a woman. The group remained in the sculptor’s studio for a long time and was later destroyed by the bombing of Milan on August 13th, 1943. This head is among the very few details of the original work that still exists. Art Nouveau abstraction, Nordic culture and classical geometry come together in this monumental marble sculpture whose volumes have been emptied of their mass and deformed by the expressive emphasis typical of the work by this Milanese artist. The Mother, with its pure, polished lines, appears almost as an abstract work that has been brutally excavated, crowned by a thin braid that resembles a Rosary. It won the Gran Premio Città di Venezia and the gold medal at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris.