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From 
Dorothy Herzog,
Director,Art Service,
344 West 72nd Street,
New York City.
'Phone:-Endicott 2-8964.

EXCLUSIVE -
For Release on or after December 9,1939 - 

NEW YORK - Last fall, when Cornelia Van Auken Chapin, the granddaughter of Deacon Samuel Chapin of the seventh generation returned to Springfield to give a lecture-demonstration in the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Gallery on direct carving, she referred often to the master of direct carving with whom she studied, Mateo Hernandez. Hernandez was expected in America by December 11 to attend the opening of his one-man show of his early sculpture, carved direct from life, frescos, and lithographs at the Fifteen Gallery, 37 West 57th Street,New York City. Due to the outbreak of the War, however, he has had to cancel his personal plans, but his one-man show nevertheless opens as scheduled with Miss Chapin arranging matters in his absence.

The life and work of the great Spanish sculptor is studded with the fascination and uniqueness expected from the man accredited with the revival of carving direct from life and whose work appears in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as important European museums. 

Mateo Hernandez was born in 1885 in the mountain town built by the Moors, Bejar, near Salamanca, Spain. His father was an architect and master builder. A passionate interest in hard stone was always an integral part of his life, and his first work was done at the age of twelve, when he carved giant bees (the emblem of the city) on a granite facade in Bejar. Later on,he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, but only for a few days,for he quickly found he would not be allowed to continue direct cutting of granite, his favorite material. The shocked professors told him that such a laborious method had not been heard of since the time of the Egyptians. 

Stockily and powerfully built, brilliant black eyes,magnetic personality, and strong,sensitive hands, in Hernandez flows the consciousness of the modern European enhanced by that of the Oriental. Indeed, he finds his