Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño writes that Mateo Inurria merged the legacy of modernisation of the influential Auguste Rodin in France with official discourses. He thus came up with work halfway between naturalism and idealisation. Inurria trained at his father’s industrial sculpture workshop at the Cordoba Fine Arts School, run by the father of Julio Romero de Torres, whom Inurria would later teach. He went on to study at the Madrid Fine Arts School from 1883 to 1885, and was granted a stipend by Cordoba Provincial Council. He also worked as a restorer at the Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba and at the Medina Azahara site. At the end of the century he travelled through France and Italy, on a journey that proved very fruitful for his subsequent artistic development. Inurria moved to Madrid in 1913.
He undertook many public commissions, such as the equestrian statute of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (known as the ‘Great Captain’) in Las Tendillas square in Cordoba (for which he used the bullfighter Lagartijo as his model). An unusual feature of this statue is that he used two materials -bronze and marble- in the same piece, with the marble being used for the figure. This sculpture, which is very well-known in the town, clearly drew from Renaissance equestrian statues. Also in his home-town of Cordoba, he produced a statue of politician Antonio Barroso (1917) which is no longer standing. In Madrid he made the Monument to Eduardo Rosales (1916) and some allegorical figures for the Monument to Alfonso XII in El Retiro Park (1905), plus a sculpture dedicated to Lope de Vega (1902).
Inurria was awarded the First Place Medal in the 1899 National Exhibition for his The Coal Mine high relief and an Honorary Medal in the 1920 National Exhibition for Form. The Education and Science Ministry held an anthological exhibition of his work in Madrid in 1968 and Cordoba City Council staged a retrospective in 2007.
Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño writes that Mateo Inurria merged the legacy of modernisation of the influential Auguste Rodin in France with official discourses. He thus came up with work halfway between naturalism and idealisation. Inurria trained at his father’s industrial sculpture workshop at the Cordoba Fine Arts School, run by the father of Julio Romero de Torres, whom Inurria would later teach. He went on to study at the Madrid Fine Arts School from 1883 to 1885, and was granted a stipend by Cordoba Provincial Council. He also worked as a restorer at the Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba and at the Medina Azahara site. At the end of the century he travelled through France and Italy, on a journey that proved very fruitful for his subsequent artistic development. Inurria moved to Madrid in 1913.
He undertook many public commissions, such as the equestrian statute of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (known as the ‘Great Captain’) in Las Tendillas square in Cordoba (for which he used the bullfighter Lagartijo as his model). An unusual feature of this statue is that he used two materials -bronze and marble- in the same piece, with the marble being used for the figure. This sculpture, which is very well-known in the town, clearly drew from Renaissance equestrian statues. Also in his home-town of Cordoba, he produced a statue of politician Antonio Barroso (1917) which is no longer standing. In Madrid he made the Monument to Eduardo Rosales (1916) and some allegorical figures for the Monument to Alfonso XII in El Retiro Park (1905), plus a sculpture dedicated to Lope de Vega (1902).
Inurria was awarded the First Place Medal in the 1899 National Exhibition for his The Coal Mine high relief and an Honorary Medal in the 1920 National Exhibition for Form. The Education and Science Ministry held an anthological exhibition of his work in Madrid in 1968 and Cordoba City Council staged a retrospective in 2007.