Skip to main content

Josep Llimona Biography

Josep Llimona

(Barcelona, ​​1864-id., 1934) Spanish sculptor.He frequented the workshop of Frederic Trías and completed his studies at the Escuela de la Llotja.In 1880 he went to Rome on a scholarship from the Barcelona City Council.With the works he carried out in Rome, among others a sketch for the equestrian statue of Ramón Berenguer el Grande, he has already achieved awards and a great reputation.Since his return to Barcelona, ​​the orders and the realizations were constant.After a period dominated by religious themes ( First Communion , 1897), he turned to the female nude, a field in which some of his masterpieces are inscribed ( Desconsolation , Youth ).In other works, such as The Forger , the tenderness of the nudes gives way to a contained aggressiveness.He is also owed, among many other creations, the monument to Dr.Robert and the Risen Christ of Montserrat.

Josep Llimona

Hermano del painter Joan Llimona, also his sons María and Rafael would be artists, dedicated respectively to sculpture and painting.Josep Llimona began his training in Federico Trías's workshop and at the age of fourteen he entered the School of Fine Arts of La Llotja in Barcelona, ​​where he studied painting with Martí Alsina and sculpture with the Valimitjana brothers and Nobas.The Barcelona City Council granted him the Fortuny pension in 1880 to further his training in Rome, a city where he frequented Enric Serra's workshop, attended the Gigi Academy and received the influence of the four-century sculpture (especially by Donatello) more than properly that of the classical one, along with certain medieval echoes.

During his first Roman year he made the sketches for the equestrian sculpture of Ramón Berenguer III el Grande, which earned him the extension of the scholarship for one more year.He then modeled the work and presented it at the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888.The reliefs that he sculpted for the monument to Christopher Columbus in the port of Barcelona (1886) also correspond to the stage immediately after his stay in Rome.commission of the Universal Exhibition, a statue of Ramón Berenguer el Viejo and the frieze of the Arc de Triomphe.

Shortly after, in 1892, Josep Llimona founded with his brother Joan the Artistic Circle of Sant Lluc, of which he was president from 1898 to 1902.To the Catholic and moralistic ideology of the Circle correspond works of religious themes such as the Virgen del Rosario (1892), Consumatum est (1896, Montserrat) and The First Communion (1897, Barcelona, ​​Museum of Modern Art ).

The First Communion (1897)

Despite its narrative nature and still being in the line of Eighteenth-century sculpture, these works correspond to a stage in which Llimona felt an increasing attraction to the so-called "modernity".Indeed, since 1891, with his female head titled Modestia , Llimona's interest in modernist aesthetics was revealed, perhaps due to the influence of the sculptor Miguel Blay Fábregas, but surely also as a result of the trips made to Paris and throughout Europe since that year.Such trips led him to get in touch, in the early years of the 20th century, with artists who represented the overcoming of detail and the eight-century mannerism, such as Auguste Rodin, Constantin Meunier or Paul Albert Bartholomé; Likewise, they led him to learn about and follow a line of search in classical Greek sculpture of forms, volumes and an aura of serenity that allowed him to connect with the artistic ideas of Aristide Maillol and Manolo Hugué.

Modesty (1891)

In 1901, following the death of his wife, the introvert character that had always characterized him seemed to intensify; Along with that introversion then increased, his Catholicism accentuated the concern to reflect physical and moral pain, which he dealt with in a series of female figures, many of them naked, which became a frequent theme of his sculptural production.In this conjunction of the preoccupation with the volumetric modeling of the bodies, the personal crisis and the interest in the treatment of the female body, his work Desconsolation (1903) originates, preserved in later replicas, from 1907, in the museum of Modern Art in Barcelona and in the Casón del Buen Retiro in Madrid.Influenced by Rodin's Danaide , this sculpture must already be described as fully modernist and reaches the highest quality within the aforementioned female nudes in which pain is reflected, intensely but serenely.The sensuality and refinement in the representation of the female body demonstrate an unusual virtuosity in marble work and an impressive ability to convey the state of mind in a contained way.

Desconsolation (1903), by Josep Llimona

Responding to an eclectic modernism and as a result of inspiration from Rodin's epic sentiment and from the realism of Meunier's figures, Llimona made a monument in honor of Dr.Robert (1903-1910), a work on a social theme, realistic and at the same time fully idealistic in its allegorical exaltation of the work, arts and letters of the Catalan people.

In the decade of the ten and the twenties, Llimona continued with his series of female nudes, characterized by their soft and delicate invoice, with an approach to the figure similar to that of his productions of the previous decade , despite which, with his attitude of restraint and serenity, he managed to connect with the movement that prevailed at that time, the Noucentisme.Examples of this are sculptures such as Youth (1913, Museum of Modern Art of Barcelona), Meditation (1917), Beauty (1924) and Cordelia (1930).

Another of the frequent themes in Llimona's work, and in the same field of body modeling, is that of male figures.In them an omnipresent serenity seemed to guide the sculptor in order to calm the possible aggressiveness that reigned in the muscular male bodies; This is how it is seen in El forjador (1914), the equestrian Sant Jordi of the Montjuïc Park (1924) or the monument to the Martyrs of Independence (1925).

Funerary statues of Josep Llimona in Comillas and Cadaqués cemeteries

He did not stop cultivating throughout his life the sculpture of religious themes, as shown by the numerous funerary monuments that he made for aristocratic or upper bourgeois families: the Maristany, counts of Lavern, in El Masnou (Barcelona), the Mundet de Arenys de Mar (Barcelona), the Rialp from Barcelona, ​​Robert from Sitges (Barcelona), Satrústegui from San Sebastián (Guipúzcoa), Santiago López de Comillas (Santander) and Berjano from Cáceres.Other notable religious works are the Burial of Christ made for the parish of Vilafranca del Penedès (Barcelona), the Risen Christ (1914, basilica of Montserrat), commissioned by the Bishop of Vic, Josep Torras i Bages, or the Calvario for the cemetery of Portugalete (Vizcaya), commissioned by the Marquis of Comillas.Included in the works on pious themes are also some of his allegorical sculptural groups such as Amor a la infantil (Escuela del Bosque, Barcelona).

In 1931, Josep Llimona was appointed president of the Barcelona Museum Board, a position from which he sought to encourage the renewal of Barcelona's artistic and cultural life, having already become one of the modernist sculptors himself most prominent and influential in Catalan artistic life in the first third of the 20th century.His career included innumerable exhibitions in Spain and Europe and had been recognized with international awards; For his equestrian statue of Ramón Berenguer el Grande, he received the gold medal of the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, and Disconsolation deserved the honor prize of the International Exhibition of Fine Arts (1907).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Francisco Asenjo Barbieri Biography

Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (Madrid, 1823-1894) Spanish composer and musicologist.The significance of Francisco Asenjo Barbieri in Spanish music is threefold: he was an excellent composer, a capable conductor, who is responsible for the introduction in Spain of many symphonic works from the European continent, and a tireless musicologist, responsible for the recovery and edition of the ancient heritage of his homeland. Francisco Asenjo Barbieri Drawn to opera since his earliest childhood (when he attended the Italian opera performances that were offered at the Teatro de la Cruz, in the that his grandfather worked), Barbieri studied clarinet, singing and composition at the Madrid Conservatory, where he had Ramón Carnicer as his teacher.At the end of his studies he carried out various tasks, from copyist to choirmaster, while trying to publicize his first compositions, including the Italian opera Il buontempone (1847). The difficulties to release it made him focus his interest o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Josep Tarradellas Biography

Josep Tarradellas (Josep Tarradellas i Joan; Cervelló, Barcelona, ​​1899-Barcelona, ​​1988) Catalan nationalist politician.His Catalanist and leftist convictions led him to participate in the republican opposition against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), as a member of various groups that, in 1931, were integrated into the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya coalition. Josep Tarradellas Tarradellas was elected secretary general of that group, which was to dominate Catalan political life during the Second Republic (1931-1936).He was a member of the Spanish Parliament and, after the approval of the first Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (1932), also a member of the Catalan Parliament, Minister of the Interior and Health and a close collaborator of the first president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Francesc Macià.
Post a Comment
Read more

Prehistory: How did the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers live?

In a previous article we already talked about Prehistory and specifically, about hunters and gatherers in the Paleolithic.We suggest you learn more about how these societies lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. Article index Prehistory: Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, how did they live? The prehistoric era encompassed the longest period of humanity, and in fact includes from the appearance of man until the first writings are given.We can say that the prehistory is divided between Neolotic, Paleolithic and stone age. Focusing on the paleolotico , the remains of paintings of the man who lived in the caves, has allowed us to know that these were mainly dedicated to hunting animals and also n collected. Adaptation to the Environment In order to carry out the collection, it was necessary to adapt to the environment that is the ability of man to obtain resources from the environment for the subsistence and growth of the society . The humans of the Paleo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jorge L. Tamayo Biography

Jorge L.Tamayo (Oaxaca, 1912-Playa Vicente, Veracruz, 1978) Mexican engineer and geographer.He was a professor of economic geography, a technical consultant on transportation for the UN attached to ECLAC, and president of the Mexican Society of Natural History (1974-1978).His works include The use of water and soil in Mexico (1958), Atlas of the water of the Mexican Republic (1976) and The fundamental problem of the Mexican agriculture (1964), for which he won the national economics prize in 1962 and 1964.Despite not being one of his fields of study, Jorge L.Tamayo also carried out an enormous task as a historian by collecting more than nine thousand writings and documents related to the Mexican president Benito Juárez, a task in which he invested ten years and whose results would be published in fifteen volumes.
Post a Comment
Read more

Francisco Morales Bermúdez Biography

Francisco Morales Bermúdez (Lima, 1921) Peruvian military and politician and military, president of the republic between 1975 and 1980.He studied with the Jesuits at the La Inmaculada school and later at the Escuela Military of Chorrillos, from which he graduated in 1943 with the rank of second lieutenant in engineering, also awarded the Sword of honor for his excellence in studies.It was also the first of his promotion in the engineering student officer courses and in those that qualified the degrees of lieutenant and captain, respectively, in the engineering weapon. Francisco Morales Bermúdez Later he graduated as an officer of the General Staff at the Higher School of War of Peru, where he obtained the Badge of honor, again for being the first in the ratings.During 1957 and 1958 he studied at the Higher School of War of the Argentine Army.Back in Peru, he was a professor at the Chorrillos Military School, at the Engineering Application School and at the Superior War School.La...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edward Kennedy Biography

Edward Kennedy (Edward Moore Kennedy, also known as Ted Kennedy; Boston, 1932-Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, 2009) American politician member of the Kennedy clan, one of the most influential families in the history of the Democratic Party.Brother of Robert Francis Kennedy and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he began his political career as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts in 1964, a position to which he would be reelected in 1970, 1982, 1992 and 1996. Edward Kennedy From 1969 to 1971 he was deputy leader of the Senate Democratic majority.His presidential aspirations were frustrated when he was convicted of reckless manslaughter in a 1969 car accident.While he was driving while intoxicated, his vehicle fell into a lake and his companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, was killed.Despite this, he would later present his candidacy for the nomination for the presidential elections of 1980 and 1988, but was defeated. Edward Kennedy had married in 1958 with Virginia Joan Bennet, with who...
Post a Comment
Read more

Georges devereux Biography

Georges Devereux (Lugos, 1908-Paris, 1985) Hungarian-American anthropologist and psychiatrist.He studied physics with Curie and Perrin, but in 1926 he went to the institute of ethnology, where he was a disciple of Maus and Lévy-Bruhl, and settled in the United States, where he was a professor at various universities.He founded ethnopsychiatry ( Ethnopsychiatry , 1970) and synthesized Greek culture ( Dreams in Greek tragedy , 1976), psychoanalysis ( Complementary ethnopsychoanalysis , 1972) and anthropology (he has two studies on the Prairie Indians and the Mohave).
Post a Comment
Read more

Duke of Rivas Biography

Duque de Rivas (Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas; Córdoba, 1791-Madrid, 1865) Spanish poet and playwright whose work is considered emblematic of Hispanic romanticism.With liberal ideas, he fought against the French in the war of independence and later against the absolutism of Fernando VII, for which he had to go into exile in Malta.These experiences inspired some of his poems, such as With eleven mortal wounds, in the manner of ancient pastoral romances.Under the influence of his friend Manuel José Quintana and of the then dominant aesthetics, his first verses (collected in Poesías , 1813) and plays, such as Ataúlfo (1814) and Lanuza (1822), were framed within the neoclassical order.However, during his Maltese exile he met the work of William Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Lord Byron and joined the romantic trend with the poems The Exile and The Outlaw's Dream (1824), and The Malta Lighthouse (1828). Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas He lived in France from 1830 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

José Rebolledo de Palafox and Melzi Biography

José Rebolledo de Palafox y Melzi Spanish military (Zaragoza, 1776-Madrid, 1847).Coming from a noble family, he belonged to the body of the Royal Guards of Corps since 1792.When the French invasion broke out the War of Independence (1808-14), José de Palafox had already been promoted to brigadier; and the popular rebellion of his city proclaimed him captain general of Zaragoza. José de Palafox (detail of a portrait of Goya) He immediately summoned the Cortes of Aragon (which had not met for a century), which confirmed in office.He organized the general mobilization for the defense of the city, which withstood two long sieges against Napoleon's troops (1808-09).The city ended up capitulating, against the advice of Palafox, who was taken prisoner and remained confined in Valençay until the end of the war. Restored to the throne of Fernando VII, Palafox was appointed Duke of Zaragoza, captain general of Aragon, head of the Halberdiers corps, general director of the War Invali...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ferdinand lassalle Biography

Ferdinand Lassalle (Breslau, present-day Poland, 1825-Geneva, Switzerland, 1864) German politician and thinker.Born into a family of Jewish merchants, he studied in Breslau and Berlin.After a brief stay in Paris, which allowed him to learn about the French socialist movement, in 1845 he joined the League of the Just.During his participation in the German revolution of 1848, for which he was imprisoned, he befriended Karl Marx. Ferdinand Lassalle That same year, he became one of the Maximum exponents of German socialism, he founded the General Association of German Workers, the first socialist movement of any significance in the country.He enjoyed high regard among the workers, but his ideology, although influenced by Marx, developed positions opposed to Marxism on revolutionary strategy and did not make great theoretical contributions to socialist thought. Lassalle, who did not understand the principles of historical materialism, defended German unification and Otto von Bismar...
Post a Comment
Read more