Julio López Hernández

JULIO LÓPEZ HERNÁNDEZ (Madrid, 1930-2018).
"Maternity".
Sculpture in bronze, copy 3/3.
Signed and justified.
Measurements: 78 cm (total height with base).
Mainly sculptor, although he has also made paintings and engravings, Julio López Hernández was born into a family dedicated to goldsmithing, and began his training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid. Later on, he extended his studies at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, where he became friends with artists such as Antonio López García and Lucio Muñoz. Finally, he completed his studies through trips to France and Italy, thanks to scholarships from the Lycée Français and the Juan March Foundation. In 1951 he participated in the Coca Sculptors School project, along with César Montaña and Eduardo Capa, among others. Already established as a fully trained artist, he will combine sculpture with teaching, which he will exercise as a professor of modeling since 1970 at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid. In his beginnings, Lopez Hernandez made mainly religious carvings, although he soon began to approach more everyday and familiar themes. He also began to work with what would become his favorite material, bronze, with which he created all kinds of works, from monuments and life-size sculptures to medals. His language, which evolved from the initial expressionism to a clear and personal realism, allows him to be included in the so-called Realist School of Madrid, together with Antonio López, Amalia Avia and others. Throughout his career he has held important exhibitions, the first important one being the one held in 1965 at the Juana Mordó Gallery in Madrid. He will exhibit again in this gallery in 1973, and that same year he will be presented in Seville by the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery. Two years later he exhibited at the Rodriguez Acosta Foundation in Granada (where he will do it again in 1985), and in 1980 he will have his first anthological exhibition, which took place at the Palacio de Cristal del Retido, in Madrid, and at the Caja de Ahorros de Asturias in Gijon and Oviedo. Only two years later, another anthological exhibition was dedicated to him, in this case at the National Museum of Sculpture in Valladolid, which later went to the Monastery of San Francisco in Cáceres and the Santillana Foundation. In 1989 a retrospective exhibition was dedicated to him at the Sala Amós Salvador in Logroño and at the Museum of Albacete, and again an anthology of his work was held in 1995, in this case at the Sala de Exposición de Plaza de España, in Madrid. Currently, works by Julio López Hernández can be found in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the British Museum in London, the Vatican Museum, the Juan de Villanueva Hall of the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seville, the Atheneum in Helsinki, the Sztuki Medalierskiej in Warsaw, the Chase Manhattan Bank Collection in New York and other outstanding public and private collections.