Ernesto Bazzaro (milan, 1859 - 1937), Caravan

Ernesto Bazzaro (Milan, 1859 - 1937)
Caravan
Bronze, cm 54 x 60 x 20
Signed at the base

The work, with a strong naturalistic connotation and depicting a woman with a child sitting on the back of a dromedary, probably part of a caravan, is the work of the artist Ernesto Bazzaro (Milan, 1859 – 1937). The image, of the strongest humanity and sweetness, is rendered by the artist in every minute detail: the rendering of the drapery is remarkable for its artistic rendering, as well as the expressiveness given to the faces.
Bazzaro was born in Milan in 1859. In 1875 he enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he took courses in ornamentation, and where he met Leonardo Bistolfi and Gaetano Previati. In 1881 he won the Luigi Canonica competition by presenting the sculpture Sordello da Goito, a work still in Romantic style. During these years, he came into contact with the Milanese Scapigliatura movement, a relationship that would be fundamental to his education; he followed the activities of the Famiglia Artistica and the Società Permanente. Younger brother of the painter Leonardo, he attended the courses of Antonio Borghi and Giuseppe Grandi at the Brera Academy, dedicating himself to sculpture. He was one of the most important Lombard sculptors of the late 19th century, with a technique close to Impressionism; he was the teacher of Paolo Troubetzkoy.
His are the marble original of the statue of Garibaldi in Monza and the monument to Felice Cavallotti in Milan, which depicts Leonidas I, the hero of the Battle of Thermopylae to whom Cavallotti had dedicated his work The March of Leonidas. Many of his other works were created for funerary monuments at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan and in that of Pallanza. Among his students we remember Costante Coter. The story of his two female figures sculpted for the façade of Palazzo Castiglioni in Milan is curious: deemed excessively busty by the population, they had to be removed and installed in another building. He died in Milan in 1937. The most important work likely remains the monument to Felice Cavallotti, created between 1901 and 1906. From 1905 to 1908 he was a member of the Milan City Council. In 1913 he exhibited Bedouin and Smiling Self-Portrait at the International Exhibition in Rome. In 1917 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Centrale d'Arte in Milan, where he presented - among other works - the bronze Self-Portrait Serious. The self-portraits themselves are characterised by an intense psychological rendering, one of the most interesting factors in Bazzaro's production which is nevertheless also reflected in the serious and absorbed expression of the musician portrayed here