Venancio Vallmitjana

Venancio Vallmitjana Barbany (Barcelona, 1 April 1830 – Barcelona, 3 September 1919) was a Spanish sculptor.

Biography Vallmitjana studied at the Escola de la Llotja in Barcelona, where he received instruction from the sculptor Damià Campeny. In 1856 he was appointed professor at that school. and to a purist aesthetic with Renaissance influences, cultivated to a greater degree by his brother Agapito, Venancio opened himself up to the French influence, more monumentalist in nature, and in 1873 he travelled to Paris. He also worked with his son, Agapit Vallmitjana i Abarca.

Vallmitjana died in Barcelona in 1919.

Distinctions

1861 – Second medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid. 1873 – Second prize, Le Figaro, in Paris. 1890 – First medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid.

Notable works Cargador de Bilbao. Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. 1862. Santa Isabel de Hungría (in collaboration with his brother Agapito). Museo del Prado. Marble group given by the brothers to Queen Isabella II, who assigned them a pension of two thousand reales per month for the duration of the work's execution after having seen and approved the sketch at the palace. 1880. Bust of Jesús de Monasterio. Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid. 1882. Design for Venus in the monumental (waterfall) in the Ciutadella Park, Barcelona. Leticia Azcue Brea (2019), "La melancolía de Roma: la escultura religiosa académica en la Corte alfonsina. Ecos puristas en la obra de Martín Riesco, los hermanos Vallmitjana o Samsó", in Alejandro Cañestro (Coord.), Svmma Stvdiorum Scvlptoricae, In memoriam Dr. Lorenzo Hernández Guardiola, II Congreso Internacional de Escultura Religiosa, Crevillent, 25–28 October 2018, Instituto alicantino de Cultura y Diputación de Alicante, 2019, pp. 59–104.