Nicodemus

Nicodemus is a work produced by the sculptress Maria Teresa Ripoll (Tarragona 1914-1987) at the Catalan Regional Government Studio-School of Painting and Sculpture in Tarragona during 1936-1937. This work, of clear noucentist inspiration, adopts the models of the first Italian renaissance, with archaic-historicist reminiscences, and reveals the influence Ripoll received from her teacher, the sculptor Joan Rebull. The figure of the nude boy, standing up, with a hieratic face and a marked counter-position, has a harmonious volume full of tenderness and serenity and reveals the innocence of his childhood.

Natural drawing was one of the courses given at the Studio-School and gave students skills in achieving proportions, volumes and lines, a painstaking study of torsos which undoubtedly enhanced her sculptural work.

In these two schools we can observe the treatment Teresa Ripoll gave to torsos and the fine mastery of the technique she acquired; with the work on light and shadows she acquired volumes that she would later project in her sculptural work.

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