Pablo Serrano

PABLO SERRANO (Crivillén, Teruel, 1908 - Madrid, 1985).
"Volaverunt. Goya", 1974.
Patinated bronze and black marble base. Exemplary 49/51.
Bibliography: Dolores Durán Ucar, "Pablo Serrano. Catálogo Razonado de Esculturas 1930-1985", Ed. Fundación Azcona, Madrid and Museo Pablo Serrano, Madrid 2017, reprod. p. 460, cat. no. 7'13-PR-1974-28.
Presents restoration on the pedestal.
Signed, titled and justified.
Measurements: 31.5 x 17.5 x 10.5 cm (figure); 2 x 13 x 8 x 8 cm (pedestal).

The work "Volaverunt, Goya" by the sculptor Pablo Serrano is part of one of the most significant projects of his career: the series dedicated to Francisco de Goya, in which the artist reflects on the figure of the Aragonese painter and his symbolic universe. Serrano developed this series during the 1970s, coinciding with a moment of profound creative maturity. In it he pays homage to Goya, taking as a starting point the engravings of Los Caprichos, in particular the print entitled Volaverunt (Nº61), where a female figure appears floating with several grotesque characters gravitating at her feet. Fascinated by Goya's critical force and psychological dimension, Serrano transfers this imagery to contemporary sculptural language, and in "Volaverunt, Goya", the sculptor explores the idea of flight, weightlessness and liberation, creating a dynamic form that seems to rise or escape from matter. Through open planes, formal tensions and an expressive treatment of bronze, the work suggests movement and transformation. It is not a literal representation of the Goyaesque engraving, but a reinterpretation of it.
After beginning his training in Zaragoza Serrano moved to Barcelona, where he studied sculpture until his departure, in 1939, to Montevideo. Between Uruguay and Argentina he worked for twenty-five years. He won the First National Prize at the Montevideo Fine Arts Salon in 1944, 1951 and 1954, but did not return to Spain until his great triumph at the Montevideo Biennial in 1955, when he was awarded the Grand Prize. That same year he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Hispano-American Biennial in Barcelona. In 1962 he exhibits, with great critical acclaim, twenty-three sculptures at the Venice Biennale. In 2003 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. We can find works by Pablo Serrano in the museum that bears his name in Zaragoza, the Reina Sofia Museum, the National Museum of Montevideo, the San José Museum in Uruguay, the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the National Galleries of Rome and Budapest, the Rio Piedras University in Puerto Rico, the Brow University in Providence, the Clear Lake Clear Lake University in Clear Lake, and the University of San José in Uruguay, Brow in Providence, Clear Lake City in Houston and Zaragoza, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Venice, the Vatican Museum and the Middelheim in Antwerp, among many others.