Mariano Benlliure

MARIANO BENLLIURE GIL (Valencia, 1862 - Madrid, 1947).
"Bull at the start of the bullfight, 1925,
Bronze.
Attached certificate issued by the Mariano Benlliure Foundation.
-Work exhibited in "Mariano Benlliure. Un arte por descubrir" curated by Lucrecia Enseñat Benlliure. Director of the Mariano Benlliure Foundation. Year 2022.
-Work reproduced in the catalog "Mariano Benlliure. An art to discover", Casa Museo Benlliure. October 2022-February 2023. pp. 64-121.
Provenance: Michael Steven Martin Collection.
Presents mark of the foundry "Mir y Ferrero fundidores de Madrid".
Measurements: 44 x 68 x 24 cm.
This work was part of the exhibition "Mariano Benlliure. Un arte por descubrir" curated by Lucrecia Enseñat Benlliure and held at the Casa Museo Benlliure in Valencia. Following the words of the catalog regarding this work "Toro de salida is a hymn to the beauty of the noble fighting animal that, aware of its strength and beauty, leaves the pigsty impetuous to reach the same dish of the square, where it is encamped: erect, with his head high, defiant, in a gesture of dominating the entire arena, wearing the bronze badge waving on the neck. It bears neither the brand name nor the number, with which Benlliure used to distinguish each of the different foundries in other models. Meleno and astracanado, his deep expression reminds us of the faces of the Picassian minotaurs. It is a casting by Mir and Ferrero, with whom Benlliure began to collaborate around 1920, as evidenced by the stamp on the right side of the back edge of the base. It bears the signature of the sculptor and the date incised on the base, in the right rear corner.
From the model of the bull, Benlliure made several casts, although he stamped each of them with some different detail at the moment of retouching the wax. The three catalogued casts, including this one, show the motto, although it flutters in a significantly different way, as does the animal's tail, and the signature and the founder's mark always appear in a different position, which is evidence of the sculptor's direct intervention in the waxes prior to the three bronzes. For one of them, dated 1923, he conceived a large base on which he modeled, in bas-relief, the complete development of the bullfight, represented in six scenes, one on each front and two on the long sides, separated by two majas in high relief."
Mariano Benlliure was born into a family with a long artistic tradition. He would also be a precocious artist, as he showed his gift for sculpture from a very early age. 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.