Crouching Woman (Back View)
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MANUEL MARTINEZ HUGUÉ DIT MANOLO (1872- 1945) Crouching Woman (back view) Ink, ink wash and gouache Label (at the reverse) : GALERIE SIMON / 29 bis, Rue d’Astorg / PARIS (VIIIe) / 1926 / N° 9670 / Manolo / Femme couchée / 26 x 24 / Photo N° Stamp (at the reverse) : douanes Label (at the reverse) : GALERIE CHALETTE / 1100 Madison Avenue, New York 28, N.Y. / MANOLO : CROUCHING WOMAN (back view) Gouache and Ink Wash H. 19,5 ; L. 19,5 cm Provenance Paris, galerie Simon New York, Galerie Chalette United States, private collection Bibliography Manolo, New York, Galerie Chalette, October 7 – November 2, 1957 (preface by D-H Kahnweiler), n°31. Blanch, Montserrat, Manolo, sculptures, peintures, dessins, Cercle d’art, 1974. Manolo Hugue, 1872-1945, Despiau-Wlérick Museum, Mont de Marsan, June 28 – September 4, 1995, Tavet-Delacour Museum, Pontoise, September 16 – November 26 1995, Villes deMont de Marsan et Pontoise , 1995. Oublier Rodin ? La sculpture à Paris(Forget Rodin? Sculpture in Paris) , 1905-1914, exhibition catalogue, Paris, musée d’Orsay, March 10 – May 31, 2009; Madrid, Fundacion MAPFRE, Juin 23 – October 4, 2009, Paris, Musée d’Orsay; Madrid, Fundacion MAPFRE, 2009. From 1919 to 1927, Manolo lived for the second time in Céret, where he built a house. Having renewed his contract with the celebrated galerist and defender of the Cubists, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, he was financially stable.[1] Manolo was even becoming internationally known, as, from 1924 on, articles praising his work began appearing in France, Germany, and the United States.[2] His second stay in Céret was therefore a time of particularly rich creativity for the sculptor, who continued to explore more deeply themes that he had undertaken earlier and to which he frequently returned. This is the case with the nude feminine figure in a crouching posture, one hand on her forehead,[3] which he explored in both drawing and in sculpture. The reliefCrouching Woman[4] and the sculpture in the roundKneeling Woman[5] both explore this theme of the inscription of the body in space captured in a geometric frame. Elisée Trenc-Ballester says in relation to the artist's work: "What really interested Manolo was the resolution of purely aesthetic problems, such as the treatment of volumes, masses, and textures, and their balance. It is in this that his grandeur and his avant-gardism lie."[6] Crouching Woman is an example of the exploration of this theme. Its lines are lively and yet discrete, and show great liberty in his use of techniques. With economy and efficiency, Manolo deftly arranges the different planes of his model's body, playing with density, or, in contrast, with the evanescent quality of the wash, in order to reconfigure the solid volumes of the feminine form that he was so fond of. At times, he used accents of black ink, lodged firmly in the curve of the thigh or in the inverted curve of the lower back and the shoulders, and at times he used touches of diluted gouache, shedding light over the drawing. This allowed the model to become one with the frame that the artist gave her, a procedure that Manolo often used, treating the themes and subjects that attracted him in drawing as well as in sculpture, and relief, going smoothly back and forth among these modes. Also from 1926, a drawing titledCrouching Nude, which is very close to Crouching Woman, is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (inv AM2507D). The drawing presented here bears the label of the Galerie Simon, which is the second gallery that D-H Kahnweiler ran. On September 1, 1920, Kahnweiler, whose goods had been sequestered during the First World War, went into partnership with André Simon in order to open a new gallery at 29 bis rue d'Astorg. The dealer did a remarkable job of getting Manolo's work out into the world. He lent works to exhibitions in France and abroad. In 1957, the Chalette Gallery in New York organized a solo exhibition of Manolo's works, including a catalogue with a preface by Kahnweiler. The drawingCrouching Woman was listed as n°31 in that exhibition. The label of the Chalette Gallery is still on the back of the drawing. No doubt acquired by collectors in the course of that exhibition, the drawing remained in the United States until it came to us. [1] The two men renewed contact in the fall of 1919, seeManolo Hugué, 1872- 1945, 1995, p. 80. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid., p.49. [4] Manolo, Femme accroupie, 1919, bas-relief in stone, H.31 ; L. 42 cm, Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris. [5] Manolo, Femme agenouillée, 1919, bronze, H.20 cm, private collection. [6] Manolo Hugué, 1872-1945, 1995, p. 18..