Born near Barcelona, Manolo remained attached to Catalonia all his life. Between 1910 and 1927, he twice spent time living in Céret, a small French Catalan village. Beginning in 1910, he was under contract with the Parisian art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, which assured him the material comforts that let him create freely. He became internationally well-known fairly quickly, thanks to exhibitions and articles in France, Germany, and the United States.

 

Created during his first stay in Céret (1910-1914), Standing Nude represents a nude woman, slightly contrapposto, with her hands clasped behind her back and her hair pulled up. The body is opulent with its forms both rounded and curved and geometricized. Manolo had earlier created another figure in the same position, but dressed; that feminine figure, titled Jeune Catalane[2] (1911), was dressed in a long, thick dress and wore a veil over her hair. A proof is in the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris (inv AM1322S). In 1913, he did another Nu (Nude), held in the Detroit Institute of Art (inv. 35.23), which is similar to Standing Nude in its pose and geometricized forms.

 

In the Ben Plantada, published in 1911, Eufenio d’Ors[3] described a feminine ideal that corresponded to that of the Catalan woman of the 20th century, whose body was “solidly planted, with an opulent harmony of proportions, flowering, but in terms of her proportions, conforming to the standards of antique statuary.”[4] According to the critics, the perfect woman is recognized by her generous and balanced proportions, which are arranged according to the ancient values of harmony and calm. D’Ors’ writings seem to have found a strong echo with the Catalan sculptors of the day, and particularly in the works of Maillol and Manolo. “Manolo knew Maillol well; he was a French Catalan and his neighbor in the Roussillon. They were also of the same generation, all of which explains the connection between their bodies of work,”[5] Kahnweiler commented. While Maillol, in his figures,[6] tried to render the purity of form and the serenity of antique beauty, Manolo created a personal version of his ideal woman, which at times corresponds closely to the vision propounded by Eugenio d’Ors. Standing Nude presents the ideal of proportions in harmony, blooming.

 

From research done by Elisabeth Lebon, a specialist in the founders of bronzes, we know that Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1879-1937), following the example of his colleague Ambroise Vollard with Maillol, asked the founder Florentin Godard to edition bronzes by Picasso, Manolo, and Laurens. According to Elisabeth Lebon, their collaboration began in 1911:[7]“Though not systematic and only recently discovered,[8] it seems that Kahnweiler asked Florentin Godard to mark the proofs that he commissioned from him with inscriptions invisible to the viewer (whether on the back of reliefs or on the inside of sculptures in the round). These consisted of a numbering, always in Roman numerals, as well as, sometimes, his initials HK,[9] which appear in relief. They indicate, without doubt, an old cast dating from the life of the artist, as the last commission that Kahnweiler gave to Florentin Godard was in April of 1929.” Like all the proofs cast under Kahnweiler’s direction from the moment he began his limited editions, our proof is not signed by Manolo. It carries the initials KH, followed by the number IIII in relief on the inside.

 

Our proof also has a label which attests to its presence in the galleries of the German art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) in Düsseldorf and in Berlin. Flechtheim met Kahnweiler in Paris in 1905 or 1906, and the two dealers worked in close collaboration between 1913 and 1933. During the First World War, Kahnweiler’s gallery was forced to close, and all his goods were seized. They were then auctioned off between 1921 and 1923; in order to rebuy them, Kahnweiler mandated his brother Gustave and his friend Alfred Flechtheim, to form a syndicate named Grassat. This syndicate bought back works by Braque and Picasso as well as all of the sculptures by Manolo that Kahnweiler had had cast.[10]Our proof was probably cast before the war and then send to Flechtheim’s German galleries once they’d been rebought after the war. Standing Nude was among the works shown in 1929 in a solo show devoted to Manolo at the galerie Simon in Paris,[11] at the Flechtheim gallery in Düsseldorf, and at the Flechtheim & Kahnweiler gallery in Frankfurt.[12]

 

According to the catalogue of a posthumous exhibition of Manolo’s works at the Louise Leiris’ gallery,[13] it seems that the edition was planned for 15 proofs.[14] At this time, we know of only one other proof of Standing Nude, which is at MoMA[15] in New York (inv.597.1939).

[1] R. Jordi, “Escultura catalana. Manuel Hugué,” Vell i Nou, Barcelona, n°8, June 30, 1916, p.85.

[2] 1974 BLANCH, repr. p. 31 n°19-20 (bronze proof from the Museo de Arte Moderno in Barcelona).

[3] Eugenio d’Ors (1881-1954) was a Catalan writer. A philosopher, art critic, essayist, and novelist, he was a specialist of the Baroque era and the most important art critic of the first half of the 20th century in Spain. After the Spanish Civil War, d’Ors became the director of the fine arts museum and the museum of contemporary art in Madrid. In 1943, he created the “Salon of the Eleven,” through which he opposed the official aesthetic of the avant-garde.

[4] André Ricau-Hernandez, “Catalan woman, full of the earth and the sea, sculpted in stone and in bronze: Eugenio d’Ors, Aristide Maillol” in Des Femmes: images et écritures (Women: Images and Writings) Paris, Andrée Mansau, p. 41.

[5] Manolo, galerie Chalette, 1957, extract of the preface by D-H Kahnweiler. He continues, “However, I don’t think Maillol ever really got away from the influence of Gauguin and of the decorative spirit, whereas Manolo’s work has developed in complete freedom.”

[6] La Méditerranée, a plaster shown in 1905 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, is one of the most successful examples.

[7] Elisabeth Lebon, article “Laurens et le Bronze” in Henri Laurens, Wellentöchter / Daughters of the Waves, exhibition catalogue, Bremen, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Sept. 30, 2018 – January 13, 2019, Mannheim, Kunsthalle, March 1- June 16, 2018, Editions Arie Hartog, Ulrike Lorenz.

[8] As far as we know, no other publication has yet studied this particularity, which we have been able to confirm on the proof of Picasso’s Glass of Absinthe in MoMA (the initials HK are backwards, no doubt Godard’s error on this first try; he hadn’t thought to reverse them on the core), and on several reliefs by Manolo, and a simple numbering on some of the Laurens.

[9] Kahnweiler called himself Henry. In addition, the small rounding of the D could have weakened the sand in the core, which may also explain the numbering in Roman numerals, as they are made up of bar lines.

[10] 13-14 June 1921: first sale of goods sequestered by the Germans, “Henry Kahnweiler Collection, modern paintings, sculptures, and ceramics” Part 1: https://archive.org/details/CollectionHenryKahnweiller13To14June1921/page/n25.

[11] The galerie Simon was the fruit of a partnership between Kahnweiler and André Simon from 1920 on.

[12] 1929 EXHIBITION.

[13] Kahnweiler’s gallery took the name Galerie Louise Leiris from 1941 on.

[14] 1961 EXHIBITION, n°17.

[15] Downton Gallery New York / Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928) / Anonymous gift to MoMA in 1939, inv. 597.1939.