The online collection and picture sale

In his early works Lucarini remained loyal to realist sculpture, which would gradually evolve towards a rather more refined idiom after he had rubbed shoulders with less traditionally minded artists while on a grant from the Provincial Council of Álava, which gave him the chance to study in Paris, between 1929 and 1931, and travel around Belgium and Italy. In Belgium in 1930, his visits to the battlefields of the First World War, Verdun and the Somme, paradigms of the war of the trenches, may well have inspired him to create ... '14 - '18. Lucarini developed an effective allegory of the dehumanization of war, where men become killing machines, the gas mask hiding both their faces and the very fact of their humanity; they become machines that keep advancing even while their comrades fall all around them. He did the work to please himself, as there was no commission involved, which meant he could look for a great formal synthesis. [Mikel Lertxundi]

Selected bibliography

• Begoña, Ana de ; Beriain, Mª Jesús. Joaquín Lucarini : escultor. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Diputación Foral de Álava, 1985. p. 21.
• Arte y artistas vascos de los años 30 = 30 urtearen hamarkadako euskal artea eta artistak [Cat. exp.]. Donostia-San Sebastián, Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia = Diputación Foral de Guipuzcoa, 1986. p. 325.
• Joaquín Lucarini : escultor : exposición antológica, 1920 - 1969 = eskultorea : erakusketa antologikoa [Cat. exp.]. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Ayuntamiento, 1997. pp. 21, 55.
• Sáenz de Gorbea, Xabier. Joaquín Lucarini, 1905-2005 : bere jaiotzaren mendeurrenean = en el centenario de su nacimiento [Cat. exp.]. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Arabako Foru Aldundia = Diputación Foral de Álava, 2005. p. 5.
• Adquisiciones 02/07 [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2007. pp. 56-57, n° cat. 19.
• Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 114.
• Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. p. 114.
• Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. p. 114, n° cat. 59.