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3 Baltasar Lobo (1910-1993) was born in the small village of Cerecinos de Campos in Zamora. He began his artistic training as an apprentice in the studio of the sculptor Ramón Núñez before attending the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. However, in 1939 he fled Franco's Spain for Paris, having lost his father, studio and the majority of his work during the bombings of the Spanish Civil War. Lobo quickly found his place amongst the vibrant group of international artists who lived and worked in Montmartre and Montparnasse. Here he established close friendships with Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso and, in particular, Henri Laurens. Laurens offered Lobo the position of assistant in his studio, provided him with a space for his own practice and introduced him to Georges Braque, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti and the renowned art critic Michel Leiris. Immersing himself in the Parisian art world, in 1945 Lobo participated in the exhibition Maîtres de l'Art Contemporain at the Galerie Vendôme alongside Laurens, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard and Léger. Following on from this important show, Lobo was included in notable salons and in 1953 he was awarded his first solo exhibition at Galerie Marcel Evrard. Through subsequent shows in museums and galleries in other European cities, including Prague, Brussels, Luxembourg and Zurich, Lobo built a powerful reputation for his striking imagery of the female form. After a beach holiday at La Ciotat in 1946, where he saw mothers and children playing together, Lobo celebrated woman in her maternal role. Through a series of drawings, paintings and sculpture, including Mere et enfant (1955) he portrayed the mother as a strong and eternal protectress, whose arms are often wrapped symbolically around her child. He developed the theme throughout his career, imagining motherhood in increasingly mythical terms with undulating and sculptural figures as seen in Mere et enfant (1958). During the 1940s Lobo also began to develop his imagery of the female nude. Working alongside Laurens, he was inspired by his monumental sculptures of the reclining female figure. Lobo similarly sought to express feminine sensuality through rhythmic and voluminous curves. Also like Laurens, as well as many other modernists including Picasso and Lipchitz, he drew inspiration from 'primitive' art forms in his treatment of the female form. Since the 1930s, when he first made visits to the archaeological museum in Madrid, he was drawn to Iberian and Cycladic sculpture, assimilating the primal simplicity and naïve forms of female idols and figurines into works such as Stella (1972). During the 1950s Lobo turned away from Laurens and towards the work of Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi, appreciating how they abstracted and reduced the figure to its most organic and essential components. In developing an increasingly elegant and refined style, Lobo would fill his studio on Rue de Vaugirard with plaster models that he constantly amended in his search for perfect balance, form and femininity. The sculpture's surface, in particular, was of the utmost importance to Lobo. With his bronze figures, such as Jeune fille à genoux (1968-1982), Lobo would finish the work with an extraordinary patina, so as to create a flawless exterior reminiscent of smooth and supple skin. Similarly with his marbles, such as Colombe (1967), Lobo chose the marble with care and allowed the purity of the smooth white surface to complement the sensuality of the soft, feminine forms of the dove. Although Lobo moved towards a simplified abstraction in his later work, his fascination with the classical figurative tradition remained. In Torse penché sur le côté (1970) and the marble sculpture Élan (1972) he simultaneously referenced the limbless torsos of antiquity, whilst re-imagining the figure in his own dynamic and stylised terms. For Lobo, there was a complementary and conceptual relationship between figuration and abstraction, through which he sought to communicate 'more directly' the very essence of femininity. During his long and prolific career Lobo had more than fifty solo exhibitions in prestigious galleries and museums. He also created large-scale sculptures for numerous outdoor commissions in France, Spain, Austria and Venezuela. He was awarded the Spanish National Prize for Sculpture in 1984. Today his work can be found in museum collections around the world including the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Centro d'Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Tokyo National Museum. In 1998 a museum dedicated to his life's work opened in Zamora, Spain. This is the third solo exhibition of Lobo's work at Connaught Brown, following on from Baltasar Lobo in 2004 and Lobo: Sculptures and Drawings in 2001. T H E F E M I N I N E F O R M

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