Ismael Smith

ISMAEL SMITH MARÍ (Barcelona, 1886 - New York, 1972).
"Couple gawking in a shop window".
Bronze sculpture.
Issue 5/9. Edition 1989.
Black marble pedestal.
Signed and numbered.
Work published in the catalog of the exhibition "Ismael Smith, precursor del Noucentisme. Sculptures, drawings and engravings", Artur Ramón Gallery.
Measurements: 24 x 27 x 24 cm (height); 6 x 28 x 29 cm (base).

When he made this sculpture, Ismael Smith's style had already evolved towards an expressionism involved in social criticism and endowed with a singular personality. A couple of vagabonds, their bodies almost fused into one, united by cold and fragility, bring their torsos and necks forward to (as the title makes clear) look through the glass of a shop window. We imagine a pastel shop or perhaps a restaurant with diners enjoying a good meal. They are wrapped in loose and humid garments. Their large hands underline the humble extraction, the hard life of those who work the land. The expressiveness is concentrated in every corner of the body, in their gestures and postures, even in the way of resolving the folds of the garments, but especially in the faces with sunken cheeks and sad eyes, with their heads protected by berets.

Sculptor, draftsman and engraver, he was one of the first artists considered noucentistes by Eugenio D'Ors. Trained at the La Lonja School in Barcelona and at the Baixas Academy, he was a student of the sculptors Benlliure, Querol, Vallmitjana and Llimona. Awarded a prize in a competition for new artists at the Ateneo Barcelonés in 1903, in 1906 he exhibited at the Sala Parés. He obtained second and third medal in the V International Exhibition of Fine Arts of Barcelona, in 1907, and second medal in the VI, in 1911. In 1910 he travels to Paris on a grant from the City Council of Barcelona. Between 1913 and 1914 he studied at the National School of Decorative Arts in the French capital, and then began a series of trips to England and the United States, holding numerous exhibitions. He settled permanently in New York in 1918, where he collaborated with the Hispanic Society. In 2005 the Palau Foundation dedicated a retrospective to him. The matrices of his engravings are conserved in the Graphic Unit of the Library of Catalonia and in the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid. Many of his prints are also in the British Museum in London, and he is also represented in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Barcelona, the MoMA in New York, the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid and the Biblioteca de Cataluña.