Antonio López has engaged with sculpture throughout his whole career, ever since he enrolled at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts of Madrid in 1950, borrowing from the Quattrocento its strong definition of volume. And although his paintings are much more plentiful than his sculptures, volume and matter are, apart from colour, equally critical in the modelling of his pictures.
Unlike the other bronze piece by this artist in the BBVA Collection, La aparición del hermanito is set in an open space, the patio or backyard of a house, even though some of the elements are redolent of the intimate, familial world so recurrent in López’s practice.
The woman’s attire and the leafless vine tell us that the scene takes place in winter. In the backyard of a low-rise home, in a rural setting or possibly the outskirts of a city, the woman has paused while looking after the ornamental plants and trees surrounding her to kneel as in prayer in front of a child levitating in space, the little brother of the title. Once again, here we are dealing with

 Magic Realism 

this entailed the introduction of everyday real images into a space that does not belong to them, and in so doing creating a strange and unexpected effect.

, a reference to death and the occult.
This bronze in the BBVA Collection is dated in 1960 but does not contain any information about its edition. However, another copy, which went on display in the survey show on this artist organised in 1993 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, is dated 1959 and numbered 2/9.