Sculpture by Agustí Querol Subirats

The coincidences do not exist and lately we have experienced it at the Museum. A couple of years ago, Natàlia Esquinas, now a doctor in art history, an specialist in sculpture, did a restoration work at the Museum and cleaned a sculptural piece – an old woman’s head in terra cotta – from the Museum’s collection, which has been there since its opening in 1966. Of the piece, nothing was known: neither how did it come to the Museum, nor when, nor which was its chronology or who the author was.

Already at that time, this piece attracted much attention to Natàlia Esquinas, as it reminded her other pieces that she knew because of her research, which was around the figure of the sculptor Josep Llimona i Bruguera.

Finally, she was able to discover the author, which is none other than Agustí Querol Subirats (Tortosa 1860 – Madrid 1909), sculptor disciple of Domènec Talarn and the brothers Agapit and Venanci Vallmitjana.

The bust of the Museum (inv. MB 217) is a part of the work La tradició, of which there are several pieces made in different materials (whole or partial), one of them, in bronze, preserved in the Museum del Prado