Manolo Hugué

Manolo Hugué worked in Barcelona in the Masriera i Campins foundry and in the workshop of the sculptor Eusebi Arnau. From 1901 to 1910 he lived in Paris, where he met Totote, who would later become his wife. In 1910, he discovered Ceret, where he will live two stages of his life (1910-1914 and 1919-1927). Ceret attracted a considerable number of artists known as the “Ceret Group” or “Ceret School”. There continued his friendships with Picasso, whom he knew from Els Quatre Gats, with Juan Gris, Junoy (who wrote about him in his first book), and with Déodat de Séverac (in 1923, he made a monument in Ceret to his memory). In 1913 he participated in the Armory Show (New York, 1913); a year later, in the same city, he presented a solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz's Little Gallery, the avant-garde space in Manhattan. In December 1917 he held an exhibition of drawings and sculptures at the Galerías Laietanas with all the favorable Noucentista critics (Eugeni d'Ors, J. Folch i Torres and Joan Sacs). Manolo lived in Barcelona from 1916 to 1919, where he collaborated with the Courbet Association. Later he moved again to Ceret, renewing his contract with Kahnweiler, director of the Galerie Simon in Paris, where he held his first individual exhibition in 1923. In 1924 he achieved great popularity in France, Germany and the United States. He participated in the SAI exhibitions in Copenhagen (1932) and Berlin (1933); in the latter city he held solo exhibitions with Alfred Flechteim in 1929 and 1931. Manolo's health forced him to move to Caldes de Montbuy, a town near Barcelona, where he lived from 1927 until his death on November 17, 1945. It was very difficult to continue his peculiar way of understanding the artistic, for which he did not really leave disciples or immediate followers.