Sculptor Miquel Blay: The First Cold – A Masterpiece in Marble
Work: The First Cold
Author: Miquel Blay (Olot 1866 – Madrid 1936)
The training of sculptor Miquel Blay began at the age of 14 in the religious sculpture workshop Vayreda Brothers, an institution in Olot in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He gained a great command of technical drawing and sculpture, creating a very personal art of Christmas and expressive force. He is an author who stands out in a decadent era in terms of the visual arts.
He moved to Paris, where he studied under Henri Chapu and was a classmate of Clarassó. The works of this time are marked by a conventional academicism.
He completed his training in Rome (1891-1893), which reaffirmed his traditional line.
From 1906 he was based in Madrid. For the modernist group, he created Popular Catalan Song for the facade of the Palace of Catalan Music (1907) and the fountain in the Plaza of Spain. In 1925 he was director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
Date: Miquel Blay, Rome 1892
Technique: Carved marble
Dimensions: 138 x 100 x 70 cm
Location: MNAC [National Art Museum of Catalonia] (Barcelona)
Importance of the work: Gold medal in the Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid, 1892. The work received a unanimous reaction from the public. Keep in mind that it coincides with the time when social realism had become fashionable in official exhibitions.
Topic
This is a group formed by an old man and a naked girl sitting on a bench, shivering in the cold. Apparently, the sculptor had seen a similar scene and decided to immortalize the impact with visual and thematic differences.
Technical Aspects
It is a work made with the technique of carving on marble. For this work, he first made a sketch in mud on a small scale that is preserved in the museum district of La Garrotxa. He opted for a larger scale, doing a perfect job which translates into a retailer at bay pylori and natural drain, the morbidex of meat, skin texture, which contrasts with the sfumato features of the faces of the two characters in the set. It is a work where you cannot stop thinking of Rodin, but it perfectly merges the story and the symbolism of modernism itself.
Style
This work, which he made at 25 years old, shows the influence of his teacher Henri Chapu, and presents a clear relationship, in theme, with the play Oedipus at Colonus, 1882 by Dominique-Jean Hugues. In the two works, there are two characters, one old and one a girl, sitting on a bench. The bearded old man is presented thoughtfully, and the girl is found lying on his collarbone for protection. Both figures are nude.
The Catalan sculpture of the late nineteenth century was inspired by the news of French sculpture, and in this sculpture, one can observe the influence of Rodin in the head of the old man, reminiscent of the bust of Victor Hugo by this sculptor, and anatomical details of both figures.
This is a work that can be included within realism, a realism that could be categorized as social if we only look at the sketches, where the characters were dressed. In the final hour, we see the characters’ moods are more marked. Therefore, in this work, we are in a time of the sculptor evolving into symbolism. The nakedness makes people stay away from irrelevance; it makes it more than a scene that may occur in the reality of every day. The nude, in this case, is a spiritual drama.
In this work, Blay is now manifested by the different treatment received by the two characters that form it. The female figure, in marble and formally symbolist, is the illusion, the ideal male figure, in bronze and formally realistic, represents real life.
This naturalistic realism sculpture shipped an anecdotal subject treated with extreme thoroughness. You only need to look at the anatomy of the old man, especially the texture of the skin, to check the technical mastery of the artist. He introduced his own visual elements of modernism to get a sculpture to a conventional synthesis and modernist sculpture. He broke the traditional realistic language that remained throughout the nineteenth century.