Aligi Sassu - Christ

A popular iconography throughout the history of Western art, the Crucifixion has its origins in the early Christian era and has developed over the centuries, culminating in the most recent expressions of contemporary art. The traditional iconography of Jesus on the cross has countless variations, from the simplest, featuring only the crucified Christ, to the version accompanied by the "mourners," the Madonna and Saint John the Evangelist. In the Middle Ages, Crucifixion scenes began to become increasingly elaborate: thieves' crosses were added, and gradually more and more figures were added, until they became the subject of large choral scenes. It is often accompanied by symbolic elements, such as the presence of the sun and moon or Adam's skull beneath Christ's cross (which signifies the redemptive action of Christ's Passion in the face of original sin).

This work is a striking example of Aligi Sassu's artistic production. While employing figurative language and remaining within the context of a harmonious and classical composition, he nevertheless embraces anti-naturalistic constraints. In this sculpture, for example, we can see how the subject's physiognomy, musculature, and plasticity draw on a classical conception of the human figure. But Sassu distorts reality, deforming it to make it more dynamic and expressive. First, he compresses the space, almost eliminating depth and forcing the figure to fill the entire surface of the painting. The modeling of the body is highly complex and demonstrates a taste for material manipulation and sculptural expressionism that is exquisitely contemporary.

Aligi Sassu, born in Milan in 1912, was a painter and sculptor. His painting efforts focused primarily on the representation of movement and physical strength, which is why the subject of the horse or man on horseback was always congenial to him. In the late 1970s, he and Bruno Munari drafted the pictorial manifesto "Dynamism and Muscular Reform," which called for a return to anti-naturalistic forms in a dynamic sense. Much of his painting, moreover, is inspired by Delacroix and his battles.

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