SCULTURE IN TERRACOTTA. FRANCISCO LUQUE

Terracotta Sculpture Signed Francisco Luque Francisco Luque Born in 1948, he began his studies at the School of Applied Arts in Córdoba in the early 1970s and began to participate in collective exhibitions in the local area of Córdoba and Jaén. His training is mainly self-taught, combining teaching tasks as a professor in his hometown with a notable artistic activity. In 1992 he took an engraving course that allowed him to expand his work. Luque has a long exhibition career and a packed curriculum. Some of his works are part of permanent exhibitions in important galleries in Madrid, Valencia, Seville, La Coruña, Murcia, Pamplona and Córdoba. His work can be admired regularly in both collective and individual exhibitions. His sculptural style is based on an ideal concept of human beauty in which forms are captured through a peculiar concept of volume and space. His work usually deals with the nude or the female figure. His Venuses are not very stylized and exuberant. In his works we can see disproportionate, exuberant and rotund proportions that the artist models, giving them his own stamp that denotes a spirit brimming with humanity. According to some critics3, his own style is inspired by the new currents of an aesthetic that has little to do with classical or academic models. Clearly influenced by the pictorial work of Peter Paul Rubens, his sculptures represent women with exuberant forms, brimming with sensuality and carnality, in which warmth is transmitted through form. The disproportion existing in his human figures, far from the canons of conventional beauty, brings him closer to a Boterism full of tenderness and serenity. The closed brushstrokes, with more defined figures and contours that characterize Fernando Botero's work, become in Francisco Luque's sculptures soft shapes and warped curves, which enclose within themselves the feminine spirit, the main motif of the author's work. Work and recognitions "Maternity" His work has received numerous awards and recognitions (First Prize in the National Painting and Sculpture Competition of Valdepeñas; First Prize for Sculpture at the 25th Anniversary of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Pozoblanco, Córdoba; Second Prize for Sculpture at the 10th International Villa de Rota Prize, Cádiz; and Honorable Mention at the Club 63 Sculpture Prize, Jaén; among others). His works are permanently exhibited at the Diocesan Museum of Fine Arts in Córdoba, the Ruiz Mateos Museum in the city of Rota, Cádiz, the Provincial Council of Córdoba, the National Library in Madrid and the Town Hall of Santaella, among others.4 An example of Francisco Luque's urban monumental work can be seen on the promenade of his hometown, Santaella.

· Size: 12x10x33 cms.