Large Medallion with a Figure or Eve's Dream - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

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Large Medallion with a Figure or Eve's Dream

Durrio, Francisco

Valladolid, 22/05/1868-Paris, 30/08/1940

Glazed ceramics

71.3 x 66.5 x 5.3 cm

Monogram (lower right half)

c. 1908

First decade of the 20th century

82/114

Donated by Quintín de Torre in 1958

Symbolism penetrated the art being made by Basque creators in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through several avenues. The contributions of Francisco Durrio are the most extensive and original of all of them. The vigour and diversity of the formal approaches that Durrio manifested in his works were rooted in his friendship with Paul Gauguin, from whom he received an artistic credo which the Bilbao native safeguarded like a holy treasure and practised throughout his life. The closest contact between the two artists was in Paris between 1893 and 1895, that is, after Gaugin's return from his first journey to Tahiti and before his second one to the Marquesas Islands. The artistic ideology was not the only gift that Gauguin bestowed upon Durrio at that time; he also gave him an extensive set of oils, watercolours, drawings, engravings and sculptures which Durrio saved as a testimony of an artistic truth revealed, and from his small house in Montmartre he used them to teach Gauguin's pathway of coherence, toil and artistic inquiry to young artists.

Durrio was unquestionably the first of the youths to follow in the footsteps of the artist who, from that moment, became his master. By elevating ceramic to the category of a material worthy of crafting works of art and not just decorative objects, Gauguin took the first step in making a colourful kind of sculpture that was a far cry from both the physical rigidities of stone and bronze and the imposture and chromatic temporariness of wood. Durrio took careful notes, and by 1895-1896, he made three monumental ceramic vases for the Abaroa de Lekeitio palace (Bizkaia), in which the references to exotic human faces and disturbing animals (serpents, birds and salamanders), as if emerging from a nightmare, convey the desire to allude to invisible realities based on a particular idea of the monstrous. The symbolic component was present in these works which were constructed with fragments of the real, yet which as wholes referred to the parallel world of the unconscious, in which the images subliminally (sub-lime, under the threshold of consciousness) speak about something other than what they depict.

However, although he never quite abandoned it, Durrio soon distanced himself from this crude iconography and large volumes in order to gear himself more towards the creation of smaller works centred around the human figure. Thus, after a few years of intense gold- and silversmithing (1898-1904), he crafted a series of pieces which include this Large Medallion with a Figure or Eve's Dream.

A flat, almost circular glazed ceramic surface shows the bas-relief of a nude female figure seen in profile. In a foetal position, with her arms resting on her knees and her head bent towards her arms, the woman is sleeping while a serpent draws close to her neck, perhaps to attack her. The reptile, which surrounds almost her entire body -its tail near her legs, its body clinging to her back, their heads at the same height- finds the woman's neck free, since her hair is falling over her face and arms. Durrio had previously used this kind of iconographic theme in his gold work.

The oval shape of the piece somehow acts as an enveloping cocoon which, along with the woman's posture, conveys the sense of an embryonic, nascent moment, an instant after which everything will change. The theme is a reinterpretation of a biblical topic, but with the serpent and the woman as the sole characters. Her consciousness abandoned to sleep, the serpent finds the right moment of vulnerability and, wrapping itself around Eve, poises to attack. She will not take a bite from the apple, but instead the reptile will bite her neck. In other words, in the dream of reason the monstrous dangers stalk us, as Francisco de Goya and Honoré de Balzac had shown before Durrio.

The woman's body is shaped classically, in the vein of Michelangelo, Cellini and Pisanello, with fine, delicate lines that sketch clearly delineated bodies. The colour of the medallion is a slightly yellowish, amniotic light ochre, and the lines of the reliefs create shadows and light spots. The varied nuances of the ochre are the outcome of the uneven action of the fire on the enamelled surface inside the kiln.

Satisfied with the result of his work, Durrio decided to make three identical versions of it: this one in ceramic, another in bronze and a third in polished brass. This practice of duplicating or even triplicating pieces was common to this artist, of whom the museum owns another piece from this same period, A Fountain (inv. no. 82/113). [Javier González de Durana ]

Selected bibliography

  • El Modernismo en España [Cat. exp.]. Madrid, Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Comisaria General de Exposiciones, 1969. p. 122, n° cat. VIII-56.
  • Pintores y escultores vascos de ayer, hoy y mañana : Paco Durrio III. Bilbao, Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1973. p. 14.
  • Pintores y escultores vascos de ayer, hoy y mañana. Bilbao, La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1975. p. 312.
  • Bengoechea, Javier de. Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao. Bilbao, La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca, 1978. p. 378.
  • Marín-Medina, José. La escultura española contemporánea, 1800-1978 : historia y evaluación crítica. Madrid, Edarcón, 1978. p. 74.
  • Bengoechea, Javier de. Catálogo de arte moderno y contemporáneo del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Bilbao, Banco de Vizcaya, 1980. p. 160. (Con el título Gran medallón con figura).
  • Plessier, Ghislaine. "Un ami de Gauguin : Francisco Durrio, 1868-1940 : sculpteur, ceramiste et orfèvre", Societe de l'Histoire de l'Art français. 1982. p. 212.
  • Barañano, Kosme María de ; González de Durana, Javier. "El escultor Francisco Durrio, 1868-1940 : epistolario, catálogo y notas sobre su vida y obra", Kobie : bellas artes, n° 5. 1988. p. 165.
  • Escultores y orfebres : Francisco Durrio, Pablo Gargallo, Julio González, Manolo Hugué [Cat. exp.]. Valencia, Bancaja, 1993. pp. 96, 190, n° cat. 3.
  • Lasterra, Crisanto de. "En París con Paco Durrio", Urtekaria 1993 : asterlanak, albistak = Anuario 1993 : estudios, crónicas. 1994. p. 74.
  • Sánchez-Pacheco, Trinidad ... [et al.]. Cerámica española. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1997. p. 525.
  • Der Blaue Reiter und das Neue Bild, 1909-1912 : von der ”Neuen Künstlervereinigung München” zum ”Blauen Reiter” [Cat. exp.]. München, Prestel, 1999. p. 341, n° cat. 99.
  • Confines : miradas, discursos, figuras en los extremos del siglo XX [Cat. exp.]. Madrid, Comunidad de Madrid, Dirección General de Archivos, Museos y Bibliotecas, 2000. pp. 112, 196.
  • Vivas, Antonio. "Paco Durrio, 1868-1904", Revista Internacional Cerámica, n° 95. 2005. p. 80.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 128-129.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 128-129.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006. pp. 128-129.
  • Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 53-55.
  • Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. pp. 53-55.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2011. pp. 128-129 n° cat. 88b.
  • Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa : gida. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2012. pp. 128-129 n° cat. 88b.
  • Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. pp. 52-54, n° cat. 24c.
  • Francisco Durrio, 1868-1940 : sobre las huellas de Gauguin [Cat. exp.]. Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2013. p. 154-155, n° cat. 137.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 128-129.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 128-129.
  • Barañano, Kosme María de. Escultura española : siglos XX-XXI [Cat. exp.]. Madrid, Marlborough, 2015. pp. 3, 24-25, il.
  • 110 Años 110 Obras [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 184-187, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Ans 110 Oeuvres [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 184-187, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Urte 110 Artelan [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 184-187, sin n° cat.
  • 110 Years 110 Works [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 184-187, sin n° cat.
  • Bilboko Museoaren alfabetoa = El alfabeto del Museo de Bilbao = The alphabet of the Bilbao Museum = L'alphabet du Musée de Bilbao [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2018. pp. 276, 281, n° cat. 158.