Faun with monocle

It forms, with the previous three, a set of satirical masks.

(See what is indicated for Faun with a beard).

This set of masks apparently responds, perhaps like no other works by Gargallo, to certain superficial and inaccurate stereotypes with which some distracted commentators and even several distant lazy critics identified some of the most ironic and expressionist works of our sculptor, considering them within the field of the caricature or, even worse, of parodic and grotesque imagery, when it seems that the wise thing would have been to pay more attention to the expressive and even clearly expressionist aspects, to the attempts to transpose some characteristics, so genuine and potentially universal, of the oriental and African plastic cultures, rediscovered for Western art in these first years of the 20th century, to the use of totally new materials and the admirable conceptual development and innovative artistic application of technical processes no less traditional than unusual and effective for the new sculpture he intended to carry out.