Julio Antonio

“JULIO ANTONIO,” Antonio Rodríguez Hernández (Tarragona, 1889–Madrid, 1919).
“The Woman with the Mantilla,” 1912.
Patinated terracotta.
Measurements: 39 x 40 x 24 cm; 43 cm (height with base).
Exhibitions: MEAM “A Century of Catalan Sculpture,” 2013. Reproduced in the catalog, p. 148.

Julio Antonio is one of the key figures in early 20th-century Spanish sculpture. He redefined classicism through a modern sensibility, introducing a fresh perspective on the human figure based on sobriety, monumentality, and expressive dignity. “Mediterranean Venus” embodies his aesthetic ideal: a beauty far removed from Modernist sentimentality, with archaic echoes, firm, balanced, and deeply Mediterranean.
He began his studies in the studio of Luis Viñales and later with the master Pedrol, whom he met at the Ateneo Obrero in Tarragona, where he had moved with his family. He continued his training in Barcelona at Félix Ferrer’s religious sculpture workshop, and in 1908 he received a scholarship from the Tarragona Provincial Council to further his studies in Madrid, where he came into contact with the sculptor Miquel Blay as well as the Generation of ’98.
In 1908, he returned to Tarragona for a drawing exhibition at the Ateneo; upon his return, he decided to leave Blay’s workshop and open his own studio in the capital, which he shared with Miquel Viladrich. In 1909, he won a competition sponsored by the Tarragona Provincial Council that allowed him to travel to Italy and become acquainted with the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Upon his return to Spain, he settled in Almadén (Ciudad Real), where he began his series *Bustos de la raza* (*Minerva of Puertollano*, *Woman of Castile*, *The Man of La Mancha*, The Miner of Almadén) as a means of capturing the Spanish identity—a series that established Julio Antonio as one of the artists who best embodied the ideals of the Generation of ’98. His body of work also includes monumental sculpture, most notably the Monument to the Heroes of Tarragona, commissioned by the city council, which would occupy him for nearly his entire artistic life. He died in 1919 of tuberculosis at the age of 30.