GARGALLO (Y CATALN), PABLO

born 1881, Mailla, Spain died Dec. 28, 1934, Reus 20th-century Spanish sculptor, among the first to work in iron; he introduced Pablo Picasso to metal sculpture. Although he used the Cubist concepts that he learned from Picasso to focus attention on the human figure, he never adopted complete abstraction. After studying drawing and sculpture in Barcelona, Gargallo won a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris but was forced to return shortly thereafter to support his widowed mother and her family. Returning to Paris in 1911, he met Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Gris, Guillaume Apollinaire, and other French artists and saw Picasso's Cubist paintings. He returned to Barcelona in 1914 and in 1917 began to teach at the Academy of Arts, only to return once more to Paris, in 1924. After his death he was honoured with four major posthumous exhibitions, in 1935 at Madrid and in Paris, in 1947 in Paris, and in 1955 at the Venice Biennale. Gargallo achieved recognition in the 1920s for his figure sculptures, constructed of thin leaves of metal. Works such as The Prophet (1930) and Picador (1928) are examples of his emphasis on the human figure and his use of Cubist techniques to achieve realism rather than abstraction.