18 June 2022
Inauguration – Baltasar Lobo
Saturday 18 June 2022, 2pm
Lobo, 1980’s. Photo: Jean-Marie del Moral
Program
– Helena Holmberg, Director of Marabouparken konsthall, welcomes everyone
– Fredrik Bergström, Director of Education at Marabouparken konsthall, presents the Marabou Park
– Janine Seldenthuis, Art Officer/Project Manager Art Programme Sundbyberg City’s New Urban Core, talks about Sundbyberg City’s approach to public art, based on Henning Throne Holst’s view of art as a common asset for everyone.
– Juan Manuel Bonet, writer and art critic, author of the museographic project for the new Baltasar Lobo Museum in Zamora, which is about to open. He has been director of the IVAM in Valencia, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Instituto Cervantes. He will give a presentation on the work of Baltasar Lobo and will unveil the sculpture Torso penché sur le côté.
The donation was made to the Marabouparken konsthall by Kjell Andersson, son of Ingrid and Conny Andersson, and Mari Carmen Caballero Lobo, Baltasar Lobo’s niece.
Baltasar Lobo (1910–1993) was a great Spanish sculptor.
During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, Lobo participated in the defence of the Republic and the legally elected government in Madrid, and once the war was over he went into exile, moving to Paris in 1939. In Paris, Lobo shared a studio with Henri Laurens; Laurens is represented in the Marabou Park with the sculpture The Undines. Lobo also met Picasso and Joan Miró in Paris and was inspired by their reduced and basic formal language. The influences of Constantin Brancusi and Hans Arp can also be found in Lobo’s work (Arp’s works have already appeared in Marabou Park). Lobo went on to exhibit alongside Fernand Léger, Matisse and Picasso, among others.
In Paris, Lobo became friends with the Swedish sculptor Liss Eriksson and his wife, the painter Britta Reich Eriksson. This led to Lobo’s participation in a group exhibition in Stockholm and Oslo in 1948, organised by the Norwegian and Swedish Committees of Spain for Spanish artists in exile. In connection with the exhibition, Lobo met the Ingrid and Conny Andersson family in Björkhagen. Conny Andersson had been a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Three years later, in 1951, Lobo had his first solo exhibition in Sweden at Galerie Blanche in Stockholm. In 1977, Lobo attended the unveiling of The Hand, Liss Eriksson’s sculpture in memory of the Spanish volunteers, which is located in Katarinavägen. Since 2016, Lobo’s sculpture Maternity, donated by the Association of Friends of Liss Eriksson, has stood in a newly created park between Björkhagen metro station and St Mark’s Church.
In 1984, Lobo was awarded the Spanish government’s National Prize for Plastic Arts. Lobo is buried in Paris, in the Montparnasse cemetery. In Zamora, near Lobo’s birthplace, there is now the Baltasar Lobo Museum, whose new museography in a Renaissance building undergoing restoration has been devised by our speaker Juan Manuel Bonet and the architect Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade.
