Rubino Edoardo
( Torino 1871- 1954 )
Italian sculptor
Originating from a humble family, while
still very young Rubino entered the atelier of Leonardo
Bistolfi, a sculptor to whom he remained bound
professionally, artistically and personally.
Rubino thus approached art by practicing drawing applied to
industry, that is a sort of high level craftsmanship (placchettes,
medals, etc.) which received constant approval in the
cultural debate in the former Savoy capital. At the end of
the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries in fact,
Turin was a truly stimulating hot bed of industrial and
decorative ideas that, only every now and then, was
considered by its exponents as supporting a precise
ideological train of thought.
A pupil of Odoardo Tabacchi and Luigi Belli at the Albertine
Academy, from 1891 Rubino continuously showed his work in
the collective exhibitions held in the halls of the Society
for the Promotion of Fine Arts which, in 1896, purchased his
first work, the half figure in bronze called "Biondina".
From the 1920s his excellent professional relations and
friendship with the painter Giacomo Grosso and the sculptor
Davide Calandra, introduced Rubino amongst the guests at one
of the most important middle class salons in Turin,
permitting him to gain success as a fashionable portraitist
for the conservative high society. These contacts, together
naturally with his artistic qualities as a sculptor,
guaranteed a series of major commissions for Rubino, from
the bas-reliefs dedicated to Queen Margherita and King
Umberto I at the Hospital of St Maurice and St Lazarus, to
sculptures for the chapel belonging to the Agnelli family at
Villar Perosa (TO); the President of Fiat, Agnelli, also
commissioned him to sculpt the monumental bronze "Victory!"
for the beacon erected in memory of the soldiers who had
fallen during World War I on the Colle della Maddalena and,
not least, the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.
Linked to the stylistic elements of the poetics of
international symbolist art, his sculptures, far from
naturalism, are characterised by decorative motifs
representing the merging of sensorial perceptions with
spiritual elements. While part of this artistic current,
Rubino did not show any ideological interest in actively
taking part with his colleagues in theoretical movements of
the time. Unlike Leonardo Bistolfi, in fact, he did not
associate with the members of the Milanese Scapigliatura
movement and neither did he share with other Turin sculptors
the positivistic and spiritualistic curiosity cultivated at
Lombroso’s home. His interest was more inclined towards
supporting the aesthetic principles of art for use by and
the education of the lower classes, like Calandra, following
a more poetic line both in tackling heroic and celebratory
themes and in the subtlety of his portraits.
( From Comune Torino )
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