Enric Clarasó

ENRIC CLARASÓ I DAUDÍ (Sant Feliu del Racó, 1857 - Barcelona, 1941).
"Forgiveness", c. 1926.
Plaster.
Measurements: 102 x 45 x 35 cm.
Exhibitions: MEAM "Somnis i tentacions. La escultura catalana en temps del Modernisme", 2025. Reproduced in the catalog, page 59.

Sculpture of strong spiritual and emotional charge, in which Enric Clarasó represents a female figure in a supplicant attitude, with her arms raised and her hands joined in a gesture of prayer or supplication. The body, naked and treated with anatomical sensitivity, emerges with solemnity on a rocky base, partially covered by a cloth that falls with elegant naturalness, bringing dynamism to the whole. The work reveals the sculptor's technical mastery and his recognized ability to transmit contained emotion through the combination of volumetric solidity, purity of lines and expressive tension. The verticality of the intensely dramatic gesture accentuates the ascending sense of the piece, reinforcing its symbolic interpretation linked to spirituality, expiation and the human dimension of suffering.

Clarasó studied at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where he was a disciple of Joan Roig. In the early eighties he met Santiago Rusiñol and Ramón Casas, with whom he exhibited repeatedly in the Sala Parés. In the middle of this decade his studio became a meeting point for artists, as well as the primitive nucleus of El Cau Ferrat. At this time Clarasó devoted himself to making clay statuettes, portraits and funerary images. He worked in the decoration of the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888 and, with the profits that this work brought him, he moved with Rusiñol to Paris. He made a second trip two years later, and joined the group formed by Casas, Rusiñol, Utrillo and Ramón Canudes. His work began in anecdotal naturalism, with works such as his "Forjador", to evolve later, after his stays in Paris, towards modernism. He participated in 1892 in the National Exhibition of Madrid, as well as in the Universal Exhibitions of Barcelona (1888), Chicago (1893) and Paris (1900), obtaining in the latter the gold medal for his funerary work "Memento Homo". Within his production stands out the monument to King James I the Conqueror, in Palma de Mallorca. Works by Clarasó are preserved in the MACBA, the National Art Museum of Catalonia and the Cau Ferrat Museum in Sitges.