Manuel Martinez Hugué dit Manolo
Woman with Raised Arms 1924
Lead pencil
Label (on the back): GALERIE SIMON / 29 bis, Rue d’Astorg / Paris (VIIIe) / 1924 / N° 8661 / Manolo / Femme aux bras levés / 24 x 16 / Photo N° 4823
H. 24, W. 16 cm
Provenance
- Paris, galerie Simon
- France, private collection
Bibliographie
- 1974 BLANCH Blanch, Montserrat, Manolo, sculptures, peintures, dessins, Cercle d’art, 1974.
- 1995 EXPOSITION Manolo Hugué, 1872-1945, musée Despiau-Wlérick, Mont de Marsan, 28 juin-4 septembre 1995, musée Tavet-Delacour Pontoise, 16 septembre-26 novembre 1995, Villes de Mont de Marsan et Pontoise, 1995.
From 1919 to 1927, Manolo lived for the second time at Céret, where he built a new house. The renewal of his contract with the celebrated dealer and defended of the cubists, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, saved the sculptor from financial precarity.[1] Manolo even achieved a certain international success, and from 1924 on, articles praising his work appeared in France, Germany, and the United States.[2]
His second stay at Céret was a time of rich and affirming creation for the sculptor, who deepened the themes he had developed earlier, working them over many times. The theme of the woman with her arms raised was one that he returned to frequently. It is found in his drawings, particularly those of dancers (n°1357 in 1974, Blanch, for example), as well as in his sculptures, such as the 1921 Femme au bras levé (Woman with Raised Arm), which was edited in terracotta, and the 1931 Danseuse (Dancer) (n°515 in 1974, Blanch), in which the raised arms are in the same position as in this drawing, with the elbows and the wrists bent. Here, the treatment of the lines that make up the body is characteristic of much of the artist’s production, and it can be compared with the 1925 drawing in the Centre Pompidou titled Femme assise (Seated Woman) (Inv AM2514D). Manolo liked to establish a rhythm in his compositions through a play of curves and counter-curves. Elisée Trenc-Ballester comments on this in the artist’s work: “What really interested Manolo was resolving purely aesthetic problems, such as the treatment of volumes, masses, textures, and their balance. It is in that that his grandeur and his avant-gardism lie.”[3]
The drawing carries a label from the galerie Simon, which was the second gallery run by D.-H. Kahnweiler. After the First World War, on September 1, 1920, the dealer, whose goods had all be sequestered, went into partnership with André Simon to open a new gallery at 29 bis rue d’Astorg. The dealer did a remarkable job of making Manolo’s work known, lending works to exhibitions in France and elsewhere.
[1] The two men resumed contact in the autumn of 1919, see 1995 exposition, p. 80.
[2] Ibid.
[3] 1995 exposition, p. 18.