Description
“ITALIAN MASTER OF THE MODERN BAROQUE”
The story of the love of Acis and the sea-nymph Galatea appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There the jealous Cyclops Polyphemus, who also loves Galatea, comes upon them embracing and crushes his rival with a boulder. His destructive passion comes to nothing when Galatea changes Acis into a river spirit as immortal as herself. The episode was made the subject of poems, operas, paintings and statues in the Renaissance and after.
Angelo Basso is one of Italy’s most prominent figurative sculptors — an heir to the Baroque tradition of the 1600s.
Basso captures the lush, assertive style of that period in his evocative female figures. His lithe, confident women miraculously glide through sea waves with the rich flowing movement of the Baroque style. Basso’s figures are immortalized in magic moments of life or captured in the delicate grace of a courtly dance.
At the age of 18, Basso enjoyed his first solo show in Italy and, since then, has exhibited internationally in Germany, England, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Japan, Australia and the United States.
The artist has received many accolades, including:
- Gondola d’Oro, 1983;
- First Prize at the Italy Arte Expo, 1983;
- the Premio Giotto Prize, 1984;
- the Stella d’Europa,1984.
Commissions include a sculpture presented to the Vatican’s Contemporary Art Collection, Rome.
