Joan Borrell Nicolau (Barcelona, August 13, 1888 - April 26, 1951) "La Ramona" (The Ramona) Bronze sculpture.Signed and dated 1922. Post modernism. 75 x 58 x 34 cm. Joan Borrell Nicolau (Barcelona, August 13, 1888 - April 26, 1951), was a Spanish sculptor, descendant of the notary of La Pobla de Segur (Lleida). He spent his youth in that town and in Tárrega, and in 1900 he moved to Barcelona and studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de La Lonja. At the same time, he collaborated in the workshops of the brothers Venancio and Agapito Vallmitjana and Enrique Clarasó. In 1909, he visited Paris, where he returned in 1913 and met Pablo Picasso. He was in contact with the sculptors Charles Despiau and Antoine Bourdelle. He held his first exhibition in Barcelona in 1910 and between 1927 and 1929 he lived between Barcelona and Madrid, where he set up a workshop. In 1929, he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, held in Madrid, where he was awarded a Second Class Medal for Bust of a Young Man. During the period of the Civil War, he took refuge in Perpignan and later spent long stays on the island of Mallorca, where many of his works can be found. He excelled as a portraitist, and in this facet the busts he modelled of the politician Enric Prat de la Riba -located in the Patio de los Naranjos of the Palau de la Generalitat de Cataluña-, of the painter and writer Santiago Rusiñol and of the composer and pianist Federico Chopin, among others, stand out. Undoubtedly, the statue of Jacinto Verdaguer, which adorns the monument that the city of Barcelona built in honour of the famous Catalan poet and ecclesiastic, is his most recognised work. For the same monument, he created three statues symbolic of epic, mystical and popular poetry. The construction of the monument was extremely long, since, although the design competition was held in 1912, it could not be inaugurated until 1924, due to several mishaps. In the same city, more than a dozen sculptures by Borrell Nicolau can be found, such as those he made for the decoration of the Plaza de Cataluña in 1928 or those that formed part of another work of the same year: the fountain called The Awakening of the Dawn, which, when some of the statues that made it up were dismantled, were placed in the same place. Juan Borrell Nicolau carried out a solid, serene and robust naturalism, with characters that showed a certain rigid aspect coming from the norms of noucentisme. His great creations stand out for their elegance with a clear Greco-Roman influence, and for his skill in representing the details of clothing. He was a member of the Artistic Circle of Barcelona and in 1950 he was appointed member of the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of St. George.Among his disciples the sculptors José Viladomat, Martín Llauradó, José Granyer and Joan Rebull stand out. Reference bibliography: https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/50235/juan-borrell-nicolau