ISMAEL SMITH MARÍ (Barcelona, 1886 - New York,... Lot 47

ISMAEL SMITH MARÍ (Barcelona, 1886 - New York, 1972). "Mask of the musician Enrique Granados". Cast in lost wax bronze from a plaster model made around 1910. Marble base. No signature or numbering. Weight of the base: 2,100 kg. Weight without base: 1,500 kg. The plaster model is in the Museo Nacional de Arte de Catalunya (MNAC), donated by the artist in 1955. Measurements: 20 x 13 x 9 cm; 42 cm with base. As its name indicates, this work is not a sculpture, but a plaster cast of the face of the famous composer to obtain a faithful copy of his effigy. The portraits obtained through this technique have their origin in the ancient world and were very common in modern art, but they were usually made when the person of whom the effigy was to be remembered had just died. They were the so-called death masks, which from the plaster mold obtained were usually transferred to other materials such as wax, resins or bronze. In this case, Granados agreed to have a mask made while he was still alive, we do not know if it was Smith's initiative. The piece has been dated to around 1910, two years after Ismael Smith made a small sculpture of Granados playing the piano and about six years before the composer died accidentally in a shipwreck in the English Channel. The musician's body and his wife were never recovered from the bottom of the sea. The mask, therefore, was made during his lifetime, even though its format had initially been thought to be mortuary. Ismael Smith trained between Barcelona and Paris, and in 1903 he was awarded a prize in a competition organized by the Ateneo in Barcelona. In 1906 he exhibited at the Sala Parés in his native city, beginning a successful career that would earn him outstanding awards in official exhibitions (International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona, second and third medals in 1907 and second in 1911) and led him to exhibit in the United Kingdom and the United States. He settled in New York in 1918, and there he collaborated with the Hispanic Society. He is represented in the British Museum in London, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the MoMA in New York, the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid and the Biblioteca de Cataluña.