Josep Llimona i Bruguera

He came from a family of artists and is one of the most representative sculptors of Modernisme.
Together with his brother, the painter Joan Llimona, from a very early age he frequented the studio of the painter Frederic Trias and went to study at La Llotja, the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, where he took painting classes with the same painter and sculpture classes with Rossend Nobas. In 1880 he was awarded a grant to study in Rome, where he went with his brother. There he did his first sculptures, in a rather realistic style, which won him a medal at the 1888 Exhibition in Barcelona and opened the way for him to contribute to some of the buildings for the event, as with the reliefs for the Arc de Triomf.
In 1893 he was one of the founding members of the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc (Artistic Circle of Saint Luke). This led to a change in his conception of art, which tended more towards Idealism, and he made sculptures on religious subjects.
His best known work is Desconsol (Grief, 1907;MNAC collection, and an enlarged replica, made in 1917, in Parc de la Ciutadella). It clearly shows the influence of Auguste Rodin and represents the basic features of Modernisme: a female nude overcome by desolation, but nevertheless serene. He did his best work at the time when the new Noucentista ("1900-ist", a term coined in 1906 to refer to 20th century Catalan culture) current had already gained ground, but he always adhered to the Modernista postulates, as in Joventut (Youth, 1913; MNAC collection).