Medardo Rosso was born in Turin, Italy, in 1858, the son of the city stationmaster. Later his family mover to Milano (Milan). As a child Rosso played hooky from school to visit a monument mason who taught him to handle a chisel and hammer. This distressed and angered his parents. At the age of 23, after a period of military service as unsatisfactory as his home life, he enrolled at the Berea Academy in Milano, where he learned to draw classical statues and copy them in gesso.

But academic art appeared to him entirely artificial, unrelated to the world around him. Before long he helped to organize the Berea students into demanding life models for the drawing classes. As a result of his revolutionary behavior he was expelle...