Bañista (Bather)

Bañista (Bather) is a life-sized figure representing a contemporary woman dressed in modern swimwear and whose face reproduces the image of Mateo Hernández’s partner, Fernande Carton, in an image indebted to ancient Greek sculpture. With the sole use of the direct carving technique, the sculpture is an example of emphatic realism and related to two of the main trends in the interwar period: Art Deco and New Objectivity.

Jean Cassou defined the sculpture as realist art “that is fully aware of its dignity, its nobility, […] in a style that makes the forms aristocratic, that illuminates with an inner flame all physiognomies, art that copies no master and in which the artist has no ambition other than to approach life as much as possible”. The work constitutes an assertive portrait of a sporty woman, and her presentation stands far from the academic tradition of Mediterranean classicism in the early decades of the twentieth century.



Carmen Fernández Aparicio