MANOLO HUGUÉ (Barcelona, 1872 - Caldes de Montbui, Barcelona, 1945).
"Woman standing", ca.1919.
Bronze.
Signed on the base.
Published (terracotta version) in the book "Manolo" by Montserrat Blanch, pg 243, n.437.
Measurements: 18,5 x 7 x 6 cm.
Woman tying up her hair, a sculpture of rounded limbs and a canon of beauty far removed from academic and classical postulates, aspects which characterised Hugué's work.
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. His artistic production combines Mediterranean tradition, Greek classicism and archaism, and the art of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, with the European avant-garde, which he assimilated and got to know at first hand, specifically Matisse's Fauvism and Cubism. Works by Hugué are kept 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.