Maria Antonia Dans

MARIA ANTONIA DANS BOADO (Oza dos Ríos, A Coruña, 1922 - Madrid, 1988).
"Labradora".
Wax on paper.
Signed in the lower margin.
Measurements: 50 x 70 cm; 74 x 94 cm (frame).
With an aesthetic close to naïff art, María Antonia Dans places the peasant woman in a landscape stratified in different chromatic strips that separate the sky, the mountain and the sown field. Fiery cerulean tones combine with touches of sienna and wheat. Dans updates here the "fauve" legacy in her own identifiable style.
María Antonia Dans began her artistic training in the workshop of Dolores Díaz Baliño and at the School of Arts and Crafts in Oza dos Ríos (A Coruña). In the early 1950s she moved to Madrid, where she continued her studies and lived for the rest of her life, attending classes at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. In this city he also met Benjamín Palencia, who (along with Daniel Vázquez Díaz), would be his main influences. He stood out for a style sometimes described as "naïf" which, in reality, is closer to a neo-expressionism of deliberately naive roots, in which the influence of popular embroidery from his region of origin is very particular. Among his themes, it is necessary to highlight the landscapes, elementary with some mosaic often, and the themes related to agricultural work in the countryside or the sea, very frequent in his career. His work has been seen both in Madrid and A Coruña, but also in Paris (where he was awarded the Medal of the city) and in other cities, and is kept in various private collections and institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, in practically all the museums of contemporary art in Galicia (and in those of several Spanish provinces), etc.