PABLO GARGALLO CATALÁN (Maella, Zaragoza, 1881 - Reus, Tarragona, 1934).
"Maternity", 1916
Relief in bronze, copy XIV/XXXV.
Signed, dated and justified.
Work published in "Pablo Gargallo. Catalogoue raisonné, Pierrette Gargallo-Anguera, Ed. Les Editions de l'Amateur, 1998, Paris.
Other copies of this same print run have been exhibited in:
- "Gargallo", Galerías Laietanas, Barcelona, October 1916,
- Gargallo", Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisbrug, November-December 1966.
- Gargallo", Rodin Museum, Paris, April-June 1970.
- Gargallo", Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid, October-December 1971.
- Gargallo", Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona, December 1971-January 1972.
- Centenaire P. Gargallo. 1881-1981", Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona, Fudaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbonne and Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, 1980-1982.
- "Gargallo. Pierres, terres et bronzes. 1900-1394", Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, November 1993-January 1994.
- Pablo Gargallo", Marlborough Gallery, Madrid, January-February 1994.
- Pablo Gargallo", Association Campredon, Art et Culture, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, July-October 1995.
Measurements: 13 x 8.5 cm; 34 x 26 cm (frame).
Pablo Gargallo was formed in Barcelona, in the School of Fine Arts and as a disciple of Eusebi Arnau, and was related to the artists of "Els Quatre Gats", so his first works will drink of modernism. In 1903 he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Paris to complete his studies. His stay in the French capital was brief, but from then until 1923, when he settled permanently in Paris, his trips there would be frequent. In this city he found the aesthetic formulations of cubism, assimilated its expressive systems and sought the schematism and essentiality of figures and objects, trying to find the authentic three-dimensional expression of the cubist postulates. During these years he began to use metallic materials such as sheet metal, copper and iron. Around 1911-12 he made his first masks, pieces of great simplification made with cut sheet metal, linked to the cubist aesthetic. Using sheet metal, Gargallo began to suggest volumes and exalt the voids through the penetration of light into the interiors. In 1920 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Escuela Técnica de Oficios Artísticos de la Mancomunidad de Cataluña, a post from which he was removed in 1923 for political reasons. It was then that Gargallo settled permanently in Paris with his wife and daughter. Gargallo is currently represented in the museum that bears his name in Zaragoza, the MoMA in New York, MACBA in Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid, among many others.