Marco Cornini's Sculpted Desires: A New Rodin?

Marco Cornini (Milan, 1966), a sculptor trained at Brera, has spent thirty years modeling almost exclusively female figures in painted terracotta. His slender, scantily clad young women sit or recline in isolation, waiting. Cornini works from imagination, not models or photographs. Critics like Alessandro Riva, Maurizio Sciaccaluga, Vittorio Sgarbi, Beatrice Buscaroli, and Luca Beatrice have championed his narrative sculpture. He uses the anachronistic technique of terracotta, linking him to Arturo Martini and Etruscan art, while his introspective subjects echo Edward Hopper and Dino Buzzati's novel *Un amore*. His figures are caught in suspended reflection, their titles—*Pensando a te*, *Forse tra poco arriverai*—reveal longing. Cornini, like a new Rodin, shapes desire, projecting his own onto his subjects.