I had just passed through the museum entrance and was entering the lobby when I was surprised by a flurry of students who, with unusual enthusiasm, were discussing the exhibited works. They moved back and forth between rooms, comparing and theorizing about the period in which the works were created and their relevance today. A gentleman very kindly asked me to step aside as he wished to photograph the drawing I was observing, and behind me, some middle-aged ladies quietly read a sign located on the wall where the original plaster casts are displayed. Highly significant works by the master. “He sometimes appears with the face of a flamenco singer, with his rough and darkened gaze, the gaze of a man who dyes his gaze.” Words by Ramón Gomez de la Serna, which physically define the sculptor Julio Antonio, words that come to life when spoken in a low voice. The Museum of Modern Art of the Diputació de Tarragona, to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the sculptor’s birth, presents “Julio Antonio, Drawn Volume.” An exhibition supported by various conferences, led by Antonio Salcedo Miliani, Teresa Camps, Francesc Fontbona, Lourdes Gimenez, Rosa Maria Ricomà, the Museum’s director, and Marisa Suarez, head of the Outreach project. These bring us closer to the artist’s era, work, and figure.
Sanguine, blue pencil, and charcoal on paper. Mixed media techniques of sanguine and charcoal in the children’s drawings, exhibiting extreme tenderness and desolation. Drawings in which health problems due to food deficiency among the marginalized classes of the era are observed. Magnificent “The Girl,” with sketches on the right side of the drawing. The students were in the second room, where an audiovisual presentation of the educational works carried out on Julio Antonio’s oeuvre is projected, related to the collection housed by the Museum, permanently exhibited on the first floor of the building. One of the young people commented that the sculptor’s small work notebooks, displayed in a showcase, resemble exotic fish in an aquarium. The others debated impressions about the large-format drawings, some with earlier sketches and minor imperfections, which, in contemporary concepts, bring them closer to material abstractions of plane and line. A group of girls remained absorbed before the “Male Torso,” remarking that despite being a simple charcoal on kraft paper, it seems as if the artist focused the work on the analysis of space, of the air between the torso and the arm. They commented on how interesting it would be to view the works without knowing the author’s name or the era to which they belong, and to let them, liberated, speak for themselves. We would observe how anti-academic Julio Antonio’s work is, and how it proposes a modernity without expiration.
On the other side, in the room opposite the lobby, the magnificent bust modeled in wood paste for the Goya monument greets us, surrounded by projects for other monuments that highlight architectural drawing reminiscent of the Renaissance. In the same room, the surprising and conceptual 1914 bronze “Moza de Aldea del Rey” is exhibited. The sketch for the “Monument to Poets” is impressive, which, like others, was never realized for one reason or another. It gives me the impression that in this cypress cloister it proposes, at the top of the staircase, there is nothing more than an enclosed space, open to the sky, a container of thought from all eras, without a roof, permanently connected to the universe, dedicated to poets of all time.
To the right, in an adjoining room, another group of young people, sheltered by the distant presence of the tapestry by Joan Miró and Josep Royo, gazed spellbound at the studies and models for the monument to composer Enric Granados, which are exhibited with the silicone molds for the project’s casting. A metamorphosis of forms, which, inverted in the mold, acquire a dizzying array of speeds, of internal tensions, like a breath in the permanent respiration of Julio Antonio’s work.
The students continued observing the works down to the smallest detail; some went outside to the street, where they continued their discussion, only to re-enter after a while, captivated by the magnetism of the drawn volume.
