Little Fisherboy

Immediacy is the fundamental element of Gemito's sculpture: he needed a pressing human stimulus, almost a pantheistic identification with the model, to give body to his darting images, overflowing with vitality. A decidedly naturalistic sculpture, then, absolutely respectful of reality in its phenomenal ductility and many-sidedness. Yet precisely the urge to fix in matter, or rather to restore to matter, its expressive dynamism conditioned his choice of “fast” materials such as wax and clay, which offer less resistance, and at the same time redeemed his sculpture, at least in its liveliest and most immediate works, from the trap of a merely repetitive realism as well as from diligent and cold copying.