Baltasar Lobo

BALTASAR LOBO (Cerecinos de Campos, Zamora, 1910 - Paris, 1993).
Untitled.
Bronze, copy 1/8.
Signed and justified.
With foundry mark.
Measurements: 28 x 44 x 19 cm.

With his characteristic language of forms, Baltasar Lobo shows us a feminine figure of curvilinear body, with the knees bent towards the chest and the hands interlaced on her. The polished and smooth surface of the bronze highlights the poetics of volume, the rounded forms and the image of a contemporary Venus, which is based on prehistoric models and at the same time is radically modern.

Sculptor and draftsman, an outstanding member of the historical avant-garde, Lobo began his training in an imagery workshop in Valladolid, where he entered at the age of twelve. In 1927 he obtained a scholarship to enter the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, although he only attended its courses for nine months. He then attended night courses at the School of Arts and Crafts, while he earned his living sculpting tombstones. In 1946 he settled in Paris, where he would live and work for the rest of his life. There he was welcomed by Picasso, and became friends with the sculptor Henri Laurens. Lobo held numerous solo exhibitions in Spain and France, as well as in Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Venezuela. The retrospective dedicated to his work at the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid in 1960 is especially noteworthy. He also took part in important group exhibitions in Europe. Currently, his sculptures are part of the urban landscape of cities such as Zurich, Annecy, Paris, Luxembourg and Caracas. Throughout his career he was distinguished with important awards, such as the Official Prize of Arts and Letters of France in 1981, the National Prize of Plastic Arts of Spain in 1984, or the Andres Bello Order of the Government of Venezuela in 1989. Two years after his death, in 1995, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas dedicated an exhibition to him. Recently an open-air exhibition of Lobo's sculptures was held in the city of Valladolid, and later moved to other capitals such as Seville, Lisbon and Madrid. In Lobo's sculpture, over the years, the form is stylized to the point of approaching abstraction, without losing its eminently figurative origin. His personal evolution is characterized by the search for the purity of volumes and the reduction of forms to the most essential, both in bronze and in granite and marble. Thematically, the woman has always been the main reference for Lobo's work. His production is divided into two clearly differentiated periods; the first, more primitivist, and a second stage marked by the influence of surrealism. Currently there is a museum in Zamora dedicated to his work, which bears his name. Lobo is also represented in the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias, the Connaught Brown Gallery in London, the Thomas Ladengalerie in Munich, the MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid, the Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf and the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz (Austria), among others.