MANOLO HUGUÉ (Barcelona, 1872 - Caldas de Montbui,... Lot 22

MANOLO HUGUÉ (Barcelona, 1872 - Caldas de Montbui, Barcelona, 1945). "The Picador". Terracotta panel. Another example (1921) is kept in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KMSr128). Work catalogued in: Montserrat Blanch, "Manolo", Barcelona, Polígrafa, 1972, p. 59, nº79. Measurements: 28.5 x 26 x 6 cm. (relief); 3.5 x 31.5 x 10 cm. (base) The themes inspired by bullfighting made Manolo Hugué one of the most precise capturers of the plastic values of this popular spectacle. He focused his attention on reproducing the vitality concentrated in the bodies and the arena. The first work of this genre, dated 1921, was precisely "El picador" (of which another copy is kept in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen). This high relief in terracotta is resolved by taking the rectangle as the limit for the composition, thus returning to the proportion used in Greek square metopes and in the cubic blocks of Egyptian sculpture. The composition, with the mounted picador's horse, also depicts a scene based on triangles, giving a certain abstraction to the form, evoking in a certain way archaic Greek sculpture. His treatment of the bullfighting genre, which is close to Goyaesque dramatism, is free of any concession to the anecdotal picturesqueness into which other contemporary sculptors attracted by the theme fell. In the course of Hugué's biography, this piece is located in his second period in Ceret (1919-1927), which, as Montserrat Blanch specifies, is characterised by the height of the sculptor's popularity, a period in which he received important monumental commissions, and in which his close friendship with Arístides Maillol, with whom he coincided in Ceret, also left its mark. It was a period in which, now distanced from the avant-garde in Paris, he continued to search alone for a way of expressing in modern language the great lesson of the classics. Manuel Martínez Hugué, Manolo Hugué, trained at the Escuela de la Lonja in Barcelona. A regular participant in the gatherings at Els Quatre Gats, he became friends with Picasso, Rusiñol, Mir and Nonell. In 1900 he moved to Paris, where he lived for ten years. There he resumed his relationship with Picasso, and became friends with other avant-garde theoreticians such as Apollinaire, Modigliani, Braque and Derain. In the French capital he worked on the design of jewellery and small sculptures, influenced by the work of his friend, the sculptor and goldsmith Paco Durrio. In 1892 he worked with Torcuato Tasso on decorative works for the celebrations of the centenary of the Discovery of America. Between 1910 and 1917, devoted entirely to sculpture, he worked in Ceret, where he brought together a heterogeneous group of artists including Juan Gris, Joaquín Sunyer and, once again, Picasso. During these years he held exhibitions in Barcelona, Paris and New York. In 1932 he was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Jorge in Barcelona. In Hugué's work, what is essential is the relationship with nature, taking into account the human figure as an integrated element in it. This is a characteristic of Noucentista classicism, but in Hugué's hands it goes beyond its limited origins. He usually depicted peasants, although he also depicted bullfighters and dancers - as can be seen on this occasion - always portrayed with a level of detail and an appreciation of textures that reveal his early training as a goldsmith. In his artistic production, Mediterranean tradition, Greek classicism and archaism, and the art of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia coexist with the European avant-garde, which he assimilated and knew at first hand, specifically Matisse's Fauvism and Cubism. Works by Hugué are housed in the MACBA, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, among many others.