Pablo Gargallo

PABLO GARGALLO CATALÁN (Maella, Zaragoza, 1881 - Reus, Tarragona, 1934).
"La segadora", 1925.
Pencil on paper.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 20 x 25 cm; 40 x 45 cm (frame).
Exhibitions: "Gargallo. Exhibition of the centenary". Barcelona, 1981. Reproduced in the catalog, reference 195.

Pablo Gargallo is considered the precursor of iron sculpture, and learned the technique of forging with his father, who owned a blacksmith shop. In 1888 his family emigrated to Barcelona for economic reasons and there he began his artistic training in the workshop of the sculptor Eusebio Arnau and at the La Lonja School, with Venancio Vallmitjana as his main teacher. At the height of Modernism in Barcelona, Gargallo frequented the gatherings of "Els quatre Gats", establishing relationships with artists such as Nonell and Picasso. That is why his first works are influenced by Modernism, as is the case of the decoration of Barcelona buildings that he made in collaboration with the architect Domènech i Montaner, such as the Hospital de la Santa Cruz y San Pablo or the Palau de la Música. In 1903 Gargallo 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. From this moment on his style acquires a very personal dimension, derived from his interpretation of cubism, based on the search for a formal synthesis of the figure in geometric planes always fluid, replacing conventional materials with wrought iron sheets, and introducing a new sculptural language by introducing the void as volume and giving his figures a great expressive drama. Pablo 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.