Ramón Barnadas

RAMÓN BARNADAS FÁBREGAS (Olot, Girona, 1909 - Vic, Barcelona, 1981).
"Pont de Besalú", 1963.
Gouache on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Broken glass.
Size: 65 x 93 cm; 76 x 104 cm (frame).
A precocious painter, at the age of ten he entered the Olot School of Fine Arts, and made his individual debut in 1929, in the Layetanas Galleries in Barcelona. Only six years later he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in his native city. He exhibited his work in Spain, Mexico and Switzerland, and won first prizes at the National Exhibition of Madrid and the International Exhibition of Palamós, the national landscape prize of the Estrada Foundation and the Ricardo Portabella prize. Barnadas, with his sketchy style, went beyond the lessons learned from realism and impressionism, becoming part of the evolutionary avant-garde of Catalonia at the time. In 2006 the Fontana d'Or cultural centre in Girona hosted a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Barnadas to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, and in the same year another exhibition was dedicated to him, organised by the Caixa de Girona. Between December 2008 and January 2009 the Les Voltes gallery in Olot presented a selection of his works to mark the centenary of his birth.