Mariano Benlliure

MARIANO BENLLIURE (Valencia, 1862 - Madrid, 1947).
"Indancia lo que más acariciamos", 1943.
Drawing on paper in pencil.
Signed, titled, dated and dedicated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 15 x 12 cm, 31 x 26 cm (frame).
Mariano Benlliure was born into a family with a long artistic tradition. He would be, in addition, a precocious artist, because from very child he left sample of his gift for the sculpture. His first competitions and exhibitions took place before he was ten years old. The man who would become one of the most famous Spanish sculptors of the twentieth century began to cultivate in his youth a subject in which he occupied a prominent place: bullfighting, presenting at the age of thirteen a sculptural group called "La cogida del picador" at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1876. In 1881 he moved to Rome, from there he traveled to Paris to visit the man he always considered his master, Francisco Domingo Marqués. In Rome he painted watercolors to be able to pay his expenses and dedicate himself more freely to sculpture. Fascinated by Michelangelo, he abandoned his brushes to devote himself exclusively to sculpture. After obtaining a 2nd medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1884 with his famous altar boy entitled Accidenti!, commissions and other awards followed, such as the 1st Medal in 1887 with the Statue of the painter Ribera (Valencia). In 1895 he settled definitively in Madrid, obtaining the Medal of Honor with the Statue of Antonio Trueba (Bilbao) and five years later the Grand Prix at the Paris Universal in 1900 with the Mausoleum of Gayarre (Roncal, Navarra). His prolific work covers all genres and sculptural techniques, highlights the nearly a hundred public and funerary monuments scattered mainly throughout the peninsula and Latin America. His style is characterized by a detailed and meticulous naturalism, a spontaneous impressionism, of nervous modeling, so fast and lively that the manual imprint of the artist is evident in the clay. He also possessed illustrious foreign decorations, such as the French Legion of Honor and the special medal of Emperor Franz Joseph. Mariano Benlliure has a museum dedicated to his work in Cervillent (Alicante), and is represented in numerous museums such as the Fine Arts Museums of Valencia, Zamora, Seville, Malaga, Cordoba, Bilbao and San Sebastian, the Prado Museum, the Academy of San Fernando and the Sorolla Museum in Madrid, and the Army Museum in Toledo, among many other public and private collections around the world.