Balthazar Lobo

Art Brokerage: Balthazar Lobo Spanish Artist: b. 1910-1993. He was a Spanish sculptor, active in France. When he was 12 years old he worked at a workshop in Valladolid making religious images, while also attending evening classes at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios. In 1927 he held an exhibition that helped him obtain a grant to study at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid, but, after three months, bored with the academic teaching, he left the school to continue his studies informally: these consisted largely of enthusiastic visits to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid and a growing interest in Iberian sculpture. His career was interrupted in 1936 by the outbreak of the Civil War, and in 1939 he went into permanent exile in Paris. There he formed friendships with Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz and in particular with Henri Laurens, who offered him a place in his workshop, and whose influence was to prove decisive in his future development and his subsequent involvement in the Ecole de Paris. After his participation in the exhibition Maîtres contemporains at the Galerie Vendôme in Paris in 1945, he had exhibitions in Oslo, Brussels, Zurich, Luxembourg and Tokyo. He had his first exhibition in Spain in 1960 and in 1984 received the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas. Lobo's work, for example the monument To the Spaniards who Died for Liberty (1948; Annecy) or Fontana (bronze, h. 1.3 m, 1971; Madrid, Cent. Reina Sofshy;a), contains elements of the primitive Iberian tradition, crude, simple and robust, combined with the elegance of a classical, Mediterranean spirit, in the style of Aristide Maillol; it also shows a debt to the Cubism of Laurens and the abstraction of Brancusi and Arp. His works often depict the female figure and images of motherhood. Listings wanted by Art Brokerage.