Álvarez Duarte, sacred and profane

Almeria,

Outside of Andalusia, his name may not be too familiar, but those who are familiar with recent imagery in that region are also familiar with the Sevillian sculptor Luis Álvarez Duarte (1949-2019). Well versed in the work of Martínez Montañés and a member, in the last years of his life, of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, he is fundamentally famous for his religious pieces, although he also made numerous creations of a secular nature.

Both share the spotlight in their first monographic exhibition, which has been hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Spanish Realism since February 28. MUREC of Almería and that Javier García-Luengo Manchado and Juan Manuel Martín Robles would be in charge. The works that comprise it come from the Álvarez Duarte Legacy, which is managed and preserved by the Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation – since 2025 and after a loan agreement with his wife, Encarnación Ortega – and which is made up of three hundred works, including sculptures in clay, polychrome terracotta, bronze and wood; drawings, molds, notes and sketches that this author treasured at the time.

Emphasizing his processes from the initial idea to the finished work, the tour shows us compositions dated between the sixties and the 2000s: those that attest that Álvarez Duarte was one of the most significant Sevillian image makers of the second half of the last century and those that show his love for realism and Andalusian traditions, their types and customs. Among the latter, we will see portraits, public monuments and figures of gypsies, cigar makers, maternity maids or bullfighters; he updated the latter charactersalthough in some cases it is possible to appreciate in them his taste for baroque modeling, so typical of Andalusian religious sculpture, and for romantic typism.

Luis Alvarez Duarte. Sketch for the Christ of Sorrows in Almería. Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation

As for his religious compositions, we will encounter images of personal devotion or models prior to the definitive images taken by Álvarez Duarte to wood, never before exposed to the public; pieces of an intimate nature compared to those that have been seen in processions in Andalusia and in cities in Argentina, Colombia or the United States.

Precocious and vocational (he was only twelve years old when he dared to create a Virgin of Sorrows), this Sevillian artist trained as a child in the workshop of the image maker Francisco Buiza, who would greatly influence, despite the early nature of his teachings, the conception of Álvarez Duarte’s sculpture. Later, he would study independently at the School of Arts and Crafts in the Andalusian capital and went through the workshops of Antonio Eslava and Rafael Barbero; With some and others he consolidated his language, however, his public consecration would come with his continued practice in sculpture, devotional and processional, which gave him popularity. We will see at the MUREC these pieces structured in four sections, corresponding to many other frequent motifs in his legacy: the Child Jesus and the angels; the saints and secondary figures for mystery steps; figures of Christ and the Virgin. We will contemplate everything from clay essays to polychrome wood carvings, following, as we said, their creative process and also their interest in capturing emotions.

In parallel, he did not stop working on those other veristic and secular sculptures in which he paid close attention to the psychology of his models and the dignity from which the representation of bullfighters or flamenco dancers could be approached. In both cases he never left emotion aside.