«To achieve this, we have used the city of Barcelona as a base for analysis within the Spanish context and its relationship with Latin America. We were looking to contribute to the understanding of the production mechanisms and commercial structures that gave shape to this professional activity from a new point of view that unites all the relevant factors. We also aimed for a greater understanding of the socio-economic networks and bases that explain the strategic importance of the sculpture profession in the contemporary society of the time, explaining their roots and later evolution as a basis for the current situation of this activity. Similarly, we have studied the processes of transfer of this framework to Latin America at the crucial time of the development of the new American nation-states, where the European model took on a special relevance.

»The research was completed by an international team of researchers with academic backgrounds in complementary disciplines, from art history and sociology to aesthetics, architecture, urbanism and professional sculpture practice. The attention paid to the importance of contacts and influences between specific geographic backgrounds has been fundamental, especially at a time when the sculpture professions were growing, creating and consolidating new infrastructure and artistic institutions. In turn, the markets and the trends of private consumption were changed by this. Ultimately, we wanted to contribute to the studies on the dissemination processes of our artistic, cultural and market transfers abroad.

»The “Sculpting the Sculptor” International Conference took place at the Universitat de Barcelona on the 10th and 11th of November 2016, organised by the GRACMON research group as a final scientific activity for our project. The conference brought together numerous specialists in the field of sculpture, both Spanish and international. The event provided a space for making contact and exchanging ideas with researchers from both the academic world and from various museological and cultural institutions: Universitat de Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, EINA, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, University of York, University of Glasgow, University of Kent, University of Pittsburgh, and Auburn University; Museu Víctor Balaguer, Museu d’Història de la Medicina, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Reial Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, Museus de Sitges, Espai Subirachs, Museo de Bellas Artes de Oviedo, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Warburg Institute, the Henry Moore Institute, and the Yale Center for British Art, amongst others. Built around four sections, the conference addressed the processes used by sculptors in the construction of their profession, from the outset to the end of their career, and hence the wordplay of the title, “Sculpting the Sculptor”. We were very grateful for the success of the initiative, to the point that it brought about the creation of this book containing the most significant contributions to the conference, as well as other relevant texts that have come out of work by the group’s junior researchers over the past few years. Each author has published in the language they prefer: as a result, the book has texts in Catalan, Spanish and English.

»One of the most interesting debates suggested by the conference was the analysis of the processes by which both the sculptor and his or her works earn recognition or not, both amongst their contemporaries and in posterity. There is practically nothing published in this field in terms of specifically modern sculpture in Catalan and Spanish contexts, and little exploration of the topic internationally, so the volume presented here is structured precisely around this idea. It is, then, one of the first publications to seek to contribute to understanding the mechanisms of prestige in 19th and 20th century sculpture, especially here in Spain.

»The first of the volume’s five sections, “Reflections on Status in Modern and Contemporary Sculpture. Mechanisms, Strategies and Case Studies” looks at the theme of artistic recognition in the field concerning us from a sociology-based perspective. At the same time, we sought to propose ideas that allowed us to draw up a theoretical corpus of the subject, and various specialists suggested reflections covering authors and works both from Europe and America, with a chronological range that goes from the 18th century to the mid-20th century. The introductory text here, which can serve as a framework discourse for the entire book, identifies and analyses the few available sources on the study of the reputation of sculpture, and speculates what the causes thereof might be, amongst which the paragone with painting has an important place. The new inroads of historiographical work suggested here propose a cross-disciplinary approach that would help break the dependency that we have had in terms of biographic texts and cataloguing over the historiography of sculpture. This section is organised chronologically to facilitate the drawing of conclusions on the mechanisms used by sculptors and, ultimately, to evaluate the longevity of these mechanisms in time. We also underline that one of the contributions made by the first section is the case of female sculptors in Rome during the latter half of the 19th century, something – sculpture produced by female professionals at that time – almost completely unheard of in Spain.»