Small Standing Female Faun (Gargallo, 1908)

Pablo Gargallo

Small Standing Female Faun 1908

Original terracotta
Monogrammed (on the base, to the right): PG
Dated (on the base, to the right): 08
25 x 8,5 x 8 cm

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Provenance

  • The artist’s studio
  • France, the artist’s family

Bibliography

  • 1970 EXPOSITION : Gargallo, Paris, musée Rodin, 1970, cat.10 (bronze, collection Anguera-Gargallo).
  • 1973 COURTHION : Courthion, Pierre, Pablo Gargallo, catalogue raisonné par Pierrette Anguera-Gargallo, XXe Siècle, Paris, 1973, repr. n°23.
  • 1979 ANGUERA : Anguera, Jean, Pablo Gargallo, éditions Carmen Martinez, 1979 Paris.
  • 1998 CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ : Gargallo-Anguera, Pierrette, Pablo Gargallo, catalogue raisonné, préface de Philippe Dagen, l’Amateur, 1998, p.79, n°34.
  • 2004 EXPOSITION : Pablo Gargallo, Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, 29 janvier- 2 mai 2004, Centre Le Bellevue, salles Les Rhunes et les Vagues, Biarritz, 25 juin-3 octobre 2004, repr.p.132-133.
  • 2004 MUSEO PABLO GARGALLO : Ordóñez Fernández, Rafael, Museo Pablo Gargallo, ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, 2004.
  • 2018 CASTRES : Gargallo, le vide est plénitude, Augé, Jean-Louis, sous la direction de, Castres, musée Goya, musée d’art hispanique, 29 juin – 28 octobre 2018, repr.p.64.

Exhibitions of the terracotta

  • 1916 BARCELONE, Gargallo, Galeríes Laietanes, octobre.
  • 1947 PARIS, Rétrospective Gargallo, Arcades des jardins du Petit Palais, 9-24 mai.
  • 1980-1981 PARIS, Pablo Gargallo, musée d’art moderne de la ville, 18 décembre-1er mars, n°15.
  • 1981 BARCELONE, Gargallo Exposició del Centenari, Gargallo, Palau de la Virreina, 1 avril-24 mai, n°
  • 1981 LISBONNE, Gargallo, Fondation Calouste Gulbekian, juin-juillet, n°
  • 1981-1982 MADRID ZARAGOZA, Gargallo Exposición del Centenario, Palacio de Cristal, 20 octobre-26 novembre, La Lonja, 7 décembre-10 janvier, n°29.
  • 2004 VALENCIA-BIARRITZ, Pablo Gargallo, Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, 29 janvier- 2 mai 2004, Centre Le Bellevue, salles Les Rhunes et les Vagues, Biarritz, 25 juin-3 octobre 2004.
 

Selective exhibitions of a bronze

  • 1937 PARIS, Maîtres de l’art indépendant, Petit Palais, juin-octobre, n°22
  • 1959 PARIS, Jeunesse des maîtres de la sculpture du XXe, musée Rodin, 16 octobre-30 novembre.
  • 1970 PARIS, Gargallo, musée Rodin, 23 avril-8juin, cat.10
  • 2018 CASTRES, Gargallo, le vide est plénitude, Castres, musée Goya, musée d’art hispanique, 29 juin – 28 octobre 2018.
“In all compositions, there are both instinctive or intuitive proportions and scientific or empirical ones. With balance, by employing both, distortion will never occur; on the contrary, the result will be a harmonious composition.” Gargallo[1]
 
Small Standing Female Faun is one of the earliest examples of Gargallo’s distinctive style. As a young artist at the time, he was sculpting decorative elements for monuments in Barcelona: the Bosc Theater and the Palau de la Música Catalana. During his regular stays in Paris, he soaked up the fresh atmosphere of the avant-garde. He spent time with Picasso and saw Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In 1907, he sparked his own revolution by creating The Little Mask with a Strand from a thin sheet of copper: “One day I started making a mask out of a sheet of metal in my studio, and when I saw the finished piece, I assure you, I leapt for joy. My heart told me I had just made a discovery! Something, my friend, that held unlimited, extremely vast possibilities.”[2]. Around the same time, he began creating several small terracotta figurines in which he gave free rein to his desires and visions: Reclining Female Faun (1906), Small Voluptuousness Kneeling (1907) and our Small Standing Female Faun all bear witness to this spirit of freedom. “It was through his series of small sculptures from 1906 to 1908 that Gargallo sought not to copy nature; but to reinvent it.”[3]
 
Here, he exaggerates the forms, distilling them, moving away from organic realism to present his imaginative and sensual vision of womanhood. The breasts and buttocks are round, almost spherical; the very slender waist gives way to the full, curvaceous forms of the hips and thighs. The bust flares out like an amphora. Small Standing Female Faun evokes the memory of prehistoric Venuses, the Venus of Willendorf, but even more so the Venus of Lespugne, these goddesses of fertility who are also representations of sexual desire. Titled “Female Faun” the reference to mythology reinforces the sensual aura the artist imbues his work with. And the feet, somewhat short, resemble goat hooves… … Reclining Small Female Faun[4], created two years earlier, depicted a small female figure reclining lasciviously, offering herself.
 
From a purely visual standpoint, Small Standing Female Faun embodies the hallmarks of Gargallo’s creative vision; a vision characterized by arabesques, sensual curves, and voluptuousness. This is also the case for the metal counterpart of this work, Woman’s Torso[5] of 1915, crafted from cut copper plaques. It seems the artist sought to reproduce, using the assemblage technique, the same forms, proportions and silhouette as in Small Standing Female Faun. Then the following year, in 1916, in the series of embossed copper plaques, the Standing Female Nude[6] echoes again the silhouette and swaying hips of Small Standing Female Faun, but with the frontal treatment of the bas-relief design.
 
The model thus gave rise to various developments in the Spanish sculptor’s work. And does it not also foreshadow Alexander Archipenko’s White Torso (National Museum of Modern Art, Paris, inv. AM1976-1131)?
 
Our Small Standing Female Faun is one of two known terracotta works created by the artist prior to the bronze casting of the model. It bears the artist’s monogram “PG” and the date “08”, and comes directly from the artist’s studio and subsequently from his family.
 
The bronze edition of the sculpture comprises 7 numbered examples, as well as 3 artist’s proofs, 1 non-commercial bronze (no. 1/1), and 1 “Museo Pablo Gargallo” bronze, which is held at the Pablo Gargallo Museum in Zaragoza, Spain.
 
The example numbered 1/7 is held at the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts, France (inv. DG 409, donated by Pierre and Kathleen Granville in 1976).
[1] 1979 ANGUERA, p.60.
[2] Cité in. Ordóñez Fernández, Rafael, Museo Pablo Gargallo, ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, 2004, p.58.
[3] 1979 ANGUERA, p.59.
[4] 1998 CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, n°28.
[5] 1998 CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, n°56.
[6] 1998 CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, n°75.