Juventud (Youth)

José Clará was originally influenced by Michelangelo’s classical sculpture, the development of his own sculptural discourse stemming a visit to Paris in 1900 and personal contact with Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol, as well as his friendship with the writer Eugenio d’Ors, who at the time was himself developing the theories which, in 1911, would produce Noucentisme. Clará became one of the main representatives of the Catalan cultural movement, which aimed, through authenticity and reconnection with the nation’s cultural cornerstones, to reach an artistic renaissance of the values of serenity and beauty of classicism. The marble statue Juventud (Youth), a little late in Noucentiste terms, shows the continued existence, well into the 20^th century, of turn of the century classicist models of resistance to the avant-garde. It also echoes the characteristics of Clará’s Noucentisme: the classical, timeless vision of the human figure, the allegorical theme, the search for perfection and harmony of form, the appreciation of the material in all its purity and the combination of the classical ideal of absolute beauty according to the universal canon. Yet this is unmistakably a vision enhanced by certain elements of objectivity and closeness to the real model.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio