DAVID LÉVY

Specialized in Modern and Postwar art, David Levy & associés is a fine art dealership located in Brussels.

With an experience of 30 years dedicated to XX century european avant-garde, from symbolism and surrealism to post-war abstraction, the gallery has contributed to major museum acquisitions and participates regularly to public exhibitions with loans of work from private collections.

Provenance

• Private collection, Italy

Exhibitions

• 1970, Baltasar Lobo. Sculptures and Drawings, Galerie Villand & Galanis, Paris, France (another cast)
• 1971, Lobo. Retrospective 1940-1971, Maison de la Culture de Bourges, France (another cast)
• 1972-1973, Baltasar Lobo. Sculptures and Drawings, traveling exhibition: Kunstamt Berlin-Tempelhof, Galerie im Rathaus, Berlin; Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany. (another cast)
• 1978, Lobo, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi, France (another cast)
• 1989-1990, Lobo, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela (another cast)

Bibliography

• J.-E. Muller, Lobo, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre sculpté, Paris, 1985, no. 117, p. 118 repr. black and white, color p.42.
• Kosme de Barañano, Baltasar Lobo Catálogo Razonado de Esculturas, Turner, Madrid, 2021, vol. II, no. 5304, repr. p. 243

At a very young age, Baltasar Lobo began as an apprentice in the workshop of sculptor Ramón Núñez in Valladolid, where he created wooden sculptures of saints for processions. He later continued his training at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, which he considered a “cemetery” and left after only three months. He then learned wood and marble carving by attending evening classes at the School of Arts and Crafts. It was during this period that he discovered the works of Picasso, Dali, Miró, and Gargallo.

In 1939, Lobo fled Spain, with many of his sculptures having been destroyed during the bombings. When he arrived in Paris, he slept under bridges and at the Saint-Lazare train station, and was soon joined by his wife. He went to see Picasso, who wasn’t home, left him a portfolio of drawings, returned the next day, and benefited from his generous and friendly help. He was then able to move into the studio that Naum Gabo was vacating; he became friends with Henri Laurens.

His figuration then simplified, in the spirit of works by Brancusi, Arp, or Moore. The theme of maternity has always been central to his work. In both his drawings and sculptures, he loves to convey the tenderness expressed by mothers playing with their children.

Among his major projects, Lobo created in 1948 in Annecy a Monument to the Spaniards who died for freedom, and especially in 1953 the bronze Maternity for the university campus in Caracas, of which this sculpture is the sketch.