Miquel Blay

MIQUEL BLAY FÁBREGAS (Olot, Girona, 1866 – Madrid, 1936).
“Young Man with Flowers.”
Bronze.
Signed. With the stamp of the Masriera y Campins foundry.
Measurements: 43 x 46 x 27 cm. (56 cm. height with base).

The work depicts the bust of a young woman with a melancholic and dreamy expression, leaning slightly forward as she holds a bouquet of flowers against her chest with both hands. The young woman’s distant gaze conveys a profound sense of introspection and poetic lyricism. Noteworthy is the extraordinary rendering of the drape of the dress, featuring wide, flared sleeves and dynamic folds with great organic fluidity. This textural quality of the surface captures light in a highly nuanced way, revealing the mark and influence of French sculptural Impressionism (Auguste Rodin and Henri Chapu).
The presence of the mark of the Barcelona foundry Masriera y Campins serves as an additional guarantee of quality and historical value. This foundry was the artistic foundry par excellence of Catalan Modernism, renowned for its absolute technical precision in lost-wax casting and the finesse of its patinas.

The sculptor Miquel Blay trained in Olot, in the Christian Art workshops of Berga i Boix and with the painter Joaquín Vayreda, creating religious images. In 1888, he traveled to Rome, and a year later, he moved to Paris on a scholarship from the Provincial Council of Girona. In the French capital, he attended the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the studio of Henri Michel Antoine Chapu. After three years in Paris, he spent a year and a half in Rome before returning to Olot in 1894. One of his most famous works, “Primeros fríos,” was created in Rome and earned Blay first prize at the 1892 National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid. This work also won a gold medal in Barcelona in 1894, and its Modernist style influenced, in fact, an entire generation of Catalan sculptors. Back in Paris, he won a medal of honor at the Universal Exposition held there in 1900 and was named a Knight of the French Legion of Honor the following year. In 1906, Blay returned to Spain and settled in Madrid, becoming a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1909 and, the following year, a professor at the Madrid School of Fine Arts. He continued to exhibit his work at the National Fine Arts Exhibitions, receiving a medal of honor in 1908 for “Eclosión” (Prado). Between 1925 and 1930, he served as director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Miquel Blay’s works are currently on view at the Prado Museum, the MACBA in Barcelona, the La Garrotxa Regional Museum, the Reina Sofía National Art Museum, and others.