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José María de
Pereda monument (Santander) |
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During the whole of the
twentieth century the more important cities were adorned
with public monuments dedicated to the most significant
events of their history. In 1911 the José
María de Pereda monument was unveiled in
Santander in the Pereda gardens, as picturesque
rememoration of some of his costumbrista
(social-realistic) novels. In the modernist tradition,
the monument to Menéndez
Pelayo
was erected, created by mariano Benlliure and situated in
the gardens of the library that is also dedicated to him
in Santander. The Palencian sculptor
Vitorio Macho stands out for combining modernism with the
Baroque tradition in his sepulchral monument to Menéndez
Pelayo in Santander cathedral, and in a bronze Christ in
the parish church of Los Corrales de Buelna. But it was
the sculptor José Villalobos, of Castro Urdiales, a
follower of Constantin Brancusi and Jacques Lipchitz, who
broke with nineteenth-century tradition and initiated a
more modern current that sought a pure sculpture, without
the use of cast-moulds, returning to straightforward
cutting and chiselling. He made the monument to the poet
José del Río Saínz at La Magdalena (Santander) and the
sculpture at Santo Domingo de la Calzada in the valley of
Toranzo.
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