Agustí Querol

AGUSTIÍ QUEROL I SUBIRATS (Tortosa, 1860-Madrid, 1909).
"Bust of Tulia", c. 1891.
Marble.
Signed.
Measurements: 58 x 49 x 31 cm.
Exhibitions: MEAM "A century of Catalan sculpture", 2013. Reproduced in the catalog, p. 45.

An exceptional student of the Escuela de la Lonja in Barcelona and of the Vallmitjana brothers, Agustín Querol y Subirats belonged to a family of bakers and managed to complete his training by winning, with "San Juan predicando en el desierto", the pension of the Royal Academy in Rome in 1884, as a full pensioner until 1888 and of merit from 1889 to 1893. In this long stay he would reap important fruits, such as "St. Francis of Assisi curing the lepers", acquired for the Prado Museum and presented at the National Exhibition of 1895. Also from his Roman period are "Tulia passing over the corpse of his father", or "Tradition", a sculptural group of an old woman narrating traditions to some children, which meant, above all, a conceptual and expressive advance in sculpture, with which he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1887 and won a first class medal; it was also awarded at the Universal Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. She received the first medal in 1895 for the head "Tulia", of which the Museo del Prado has two versions, and which she had presented at the Munich Exhibition of 1890. He obtained the medal of honor at the 1906 Exhibition to which he had presented "The Tradition" and a portrait of "The Princess of Asturias and Sagunto", a Roman shipment of 1890, preserved in the Prado Museum and whose plaster he had presented in Munich in 1897. He achieved important distinctions at national and international level, among others, the first class medals at the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1889, at the International Exhibition of Vienna in 1894 and 1898, at the International Exhibition of Berlin in 1896 or at the International Exhibition of Paris in 1900 where he presented ten works.
Thanks to his strong personality he led a realist trend within an academic classicism, with innovative creations focused on narrative, expressiveness and pictorial effects, in a large number of works despite his untimely death. He carried out several monumental projects and commissions for which he needed a very large workshop, and some works remained unfinished. In several cases he presented a duplication of models, with some examples of unequal fortune, but with outstanding contributions, such as the relief of the pediment of the National Library of Madrid in 1892 with allegories of "Fame", "Royalty", "Muses" and "Letters", the colossal groups that crown the facade of the Ministry of Agriculture, various monuments in the most important capitals of Spain such as those of "Moyano" and "Quevedo" in Madrid, "Casilda Iturrízar" in Bilbao, "Federico Soler" in Barcelona, "Méndez Núñez" in Vigo, or the one dedicated to the "Siege of Zaragoza", and others in Cadiz, Santander, or outside Spain, in Manila, Mexico or Montevideo, the "General Bolognesi" in Lima, the "General Urquiza" in Panama, the "Monumento de los Españoles" in Buenos Aires or the cemetery of Havana, etc. Gil, in his biography of 1910, lists more than eighty works, without counting replicas, fragments, etc. He portrayed "Alfonso XIII" - a bush that won a gold medal at the Vienna Exhibition in 1894 and was acquired by the Royal House -, the "Queen Regent", "Ramón y Cajal", "Mauro", "Canalejas", he made the head of "San Francisco", preserved in the Capa collection and in the Prado Museum, and a "Dolorosa" also in the Prado.