PABLO SERRANO AGUILAR, (Teruel, 1908 - Madrid, 1985)."Bull (oval)", ca. 1949.Carved and polished black stone. Unique piece.Signed "Serrano" in stone.With inventory number from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA.Provenance:- Joseph Cantor Collection, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.- Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, USA (Inv. 1987.97).- Private collection, New York.Literature: "Pablo Serrano. Catalogue Raisonné of Sculptures". Madrid, Fundación Azcona, Gobierno de Aragón and IAACC Pablo Serrano, 2018, p.172, cat. No. 167-UE-1949-13 (black and white illustration).Size: 35.5 x 30.5 x 25.4 cm.Pablo Serrano began his series "Toros" in 1949, when he was already a well-known figurative and religious sculptor based in Montevideo. At that time he had already been awarded the Gold Medal at the Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Uruguay and enjoyed an established artistic reputation. His restless personality and his eagerness to explore new paths led him to focus his production on the simplification of forms, leaving aside the realism that had prevailed in his works until then, and moving towards geometrisation and abstraction. His "Bulls" series seeks the essence of the animal by making use of minimal gestures, based on small-format sculptures that are rooted in the European imaginary of the 1930s, with representatives such as Brancusi and Hans Arp. This bullfighting series, whose sketches were made in Montevideo, although many were melted down after his arrival in Spain in 1955 and later, when he took up the theme again between 1970 and 1973, had already been worked on by other artists such as Picasso, who devoted a large part of his production to extolling the figure of the bull.Trained in sculpture, Pablo Serrano received his first lessons at the Salesian School in Sarriá. After finishing his studies he moved to Argentina, where he was taught the art of carving. After this period abroad, he decided to return to Spain in 1955 with a renewed technique in which diversity and unity prevailed. Serrano evolved through experimentation in each of his stages, as he was guided by his own will and not by the requirements of society. In 1956 he settled in Madrid, where he became a founding member of the El Paso group of Madrid's most innovative artists. Pablo Serrano works through poetry, delving into juxtaposed terms such as beginning and end, life and death, despair and hope. He also works on the figure of the human being, trying to explain and understand the human situation through his works. During his career, Serrano won the Sculpture Prize at the Hispano-American Biennial in Barcelona. In 1962 he exhibited twenty-three sculptures at the Venice Biennale to great critical acclaim. In 2003 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. Works by Pablo Serrano can be found in the museum that bears his name in Zaragoza, the Museo Reina Sofía, the Museo Nacional in Montevideo, the Museo San José in Uruguay, the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Paris, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the National Galleries in Rome and Budapest, the Rio Piedras University in Puerto Rico, the Brow University in Providence, the Clear Lake Clear Lake University in Clear Lake, and the University of Puerto Rico, Brow University in Providence, Clear Lake City University in Houston and the University of Zaragoza, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Venice, the Vatican Museum and the Middelheim in Antwerp, among many others.
