1955 Marcelo Barbero SP/CY

A 1955 flamenco guitar by Marcelo Barbero, with a spruce top and cypress back and sides, built in Madrid in the last year of his life – structurally in top condition, with one top crack repaired by Yuris Zeltins.

From the Last Year of Barbero's Life

This guitar was made at the peak of Barbero's career – in fact in the last year of his life, as he died in early 1956. It is the style of instrument the flamenco world still holds up as the archetype: an ultra-light build, a massive, bullet-like sound, immediate response and, most importantly, a round, "juicy" and simply gorgeous tone.

Condition

Apart from one crack in the top, recently repaired by Yuris Zeltins, the guitar is in great shape. It does show signs of use, but this is all superficial wear only, and structurally the guitar is in top condition. A fantastic example by one of – if not "the" – most legendary flamenco makers of the 20th century.

Marcelo Barbero: The Stradivari of Lavapiés

Marcelo Barbero (c. 1904–1956) is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish guitar makers of the 20th century and, above all, as the archetypal maker of the flamenco guitar. Born in Madrid to a poor family and orphaned as a boy, he learned the trade in the workshop of José Ramírez I and went on working under José Ramírez II. He had a colorful life outside the shop too – boxer, racing cyclist and flamenco singer in the tablaos of Madrid – yet he never played the guitar himself; his designs grew out of his own experience and the constant feedback of the best players of the day.

Completing the Last Guitars of Santos Hernández

After Santos Hernández died in March 1943, his widow, Matilde Ruiz López, called on Barbero to finish the guitars Santos had left uncompleted in his workshop at Aduana 23 – work that kept him busy for about three years and gave him a unique, first-hand look at the methods of the great master. Santos's influence shows in the heads, rosettes and proportions of Barbero's guitars of the 1940s; from around the end of 1948 he developed a model of his own, with a new outline, head, rosette, bracing and bridge.

Barbero's Flamenco Guitars and Legacy

Barbero's own shop was in Lavapiés, the old quarter of Madrid near the flamenco tablaos, and he built only to order, for players in Spain and as far away as England, South America, Germany, Italy and Japan. His most famous guitar, from 1951, was made for Carlos Montoya and ended up with Sabicas, who recorded on it for the albums later issued as "Flamenco Puro". In the 1950s he moved toward a fuller, more austere and almost classical voice, with slightly thicker woods and a thin bar across the top under the bridge. He died on March 6, 1956, mourned in the Madrid press as the "Stradivari of Lavapiés". His only real pupil and successor was Arcángel Fernández, who later trained Barbero's son, Marcelo Barbero Hijo.