Martí Llauradó

MARTI LLAURADÓ MARISCOT (Barcelona, 1903 - 1957).
"Portrait of Gemma".
Plaster.
Work catalogued in "Martí Llauradó". Josep Porter i Moix, 1993, p. 38, n.47.
Measurements: 31 x 25 x 18 cm.
This sculpture clearly shows the advance that Llauradó's work represented with respect to Noucentisme. The sculptor left behind the archaising and symbolic idealisation of the previous generation, moving towards capturing an intimate portrait through a more descriptive and narrative gaze, more realistic in short, which nevertheless does not forget the formal bases learned from the noucentistes. Thus, the figures are rotund and monumental, an effect that Llauradó does not achieve through traditional procedures, such as a low viewpoint, but through a totally sculptural sense of the figure, with volumetric and forceful forms, precise and clear and at the same time softly idealised, going beyond the portrait to capture an ideal through an everyday image.
The sculptor Martí Llauradó worked during his youth with Joan Borrell and Joan Rebull, from whom he received important influences. In 1929 he made his debut with his first solo exhibition in Barcelona, together with Joan Commeleran. From then on he continued to exhibit his work and to take part in competitions, and in 1933 he was awarded a prize at the Exhibition of the Nude at the Círculo Artístico in Barcelona. The following year he won the first medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid. In the post-war period he won other important prizes in cities such as Seville (for religious art), Madrid and Barcelona, and was invited to take part in two editions of the Venice Biennale. Llauradó was a leading figure of the young generation of post-noucentisme, and tempered the stylised idealism of the noucentistes with an accentuation of realism. He is currently represented at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.