BALTASAR LOBO CASQUERO (Cerecinos de Campos, Zamora, 1910 - Paris, 1993)Untitled.Charcoal and crayon on paper.With a stain on the upper part.Signed in the lower right corner.Size: 48 x 64 cm; 64 x 79 cm (frame).Drawing in which the author presents us with a female figure of voluptuous forms tending towards an aesthetic language close to attraction. This characteristic is achieved through the use of the curved line and the play of volumes that are alien to an anatomy of a realistic nature.A sculptor and draughtsman, an outstanding member of the historical avant-garde, Lobo began his training in a workshop of imagery in Valladolid, where he entered at the age of twelve. In 1927 he obtained a scholarship to enter the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, although he only attended its courses for nine months. He then attended evening courses at the School of Arts and Crafts, while earning his living by sculpting tombstones. In 1946 he settled in Paris, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. There he was welcomed by Picasso, and became friends with the sculptor Henri Laurens. Lobo held numerous solo exhibitions, both in Spain and France and in Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Venezuela. Of particular note was the retrospective devoted to his work at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Madrid in 1960. He also took part in important group exhibitions in Europe. His sculptures are now part of the urban landscape of cities such as Zurich, Annecy, Paris, Luxembourg and Caracas. Throughout his career he received important awards, such as the Official Prize for the Arts and Letters of France in 1981, the National Prize for Plastic Arts of Spain in 1984, and the Andres Bello Order of the Venezuelan Government in 1989. Two years after his death, in 1995, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas dedicated an exhibition to him. An open-air exhibition of Lobo's sculptures has recently been held in the city of Valladolid, and has subsequently moved to other capitals such as Seville, Lisbon and Madrid. In Lobo's sculpture, over the years, the form has become stylised to the point of approaching abstraction, without losing its eminently figurative origin. His personal evolution is characterised by the search for the purity of volumes and the reduction of forms to the most essential, both in bronze and in granite and marble. Thematically, the woman has always been the main reference point for Lobo's work. His production is divided into two clearly differentiated periods; the first, more primitivist, and a second period marked by the influence of surrealism. There is currently a museum in Zamora dedicated to his work, which bears his name. Lobo is also represented in the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias, the Connaught Brown Gallery in London, the Thomas Ladengalerie in Munich, the MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf and the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz (Austria), among others.