Celso Lagar

CELSO LAGAR ARROYO (Ciudad Rodrigo, León, 1891 - Seville, 1966).
"Female nude with her back turned".
Charcoal drawing on paper.
With testamentary stamp in the lower right area.
It presents faults and wrinkles in the paper.
Measurements: 42 x 28 cm; 55 x 40 cm (frame).

Celso Lagar began his training in the field of sculpture, under the guidance of Miguel Blay in Madrid. His teacher advised him to travel to Paris to complete his studies and, after spending a year in Barcelona, he traveled to the French capital for the first time in 1911. Lagar's career, both personally and artistically, can be divided into four distinct periods, marked by the two World Wars. The first of these periods was that of apprenticeship, in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, where he came into contact with artists such as Amadeo Modigliani. This stage ended when he was forced to leave Paris at the outbreak of the Great War. He settled in Barcelona but held several exhibitions in the French capital, which would later serve as a letter of introduction upon his return to the city after the war, in 1919. By then Lagar was already a consolidated artist, and he settled definitively in Paris. He had regular exhibitions in the best Parisian galleries such as Berthe Weil, Percier, Zborowski, Barreiro, Brouant, and Druet. His style reached its personal maturity and he devoted himself fully to painting, leaving sculpture behind. The outbreak of World War II marked the end of Lagar's golden age. He emigrated to the French Pyrenees, and his return to the recently liberated city of Paris where he did not obtain the repercussion he expected, since the collecting public demanded new contents. After his wife fell ill in 1956, Lagar fell into a deep depression, and he was hospitalized in a psychiatric center. He stopped painting for good and in 1964 he returned to Spain, spending his last years at his sister's house in Seville. Today Lagar's work is represented in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco Casa Lis, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Petit Palais in Geneva, the Fine Arts Museums of La Rochelle, Castres and Honfleur (France) and in prestigious collections such as Crane Kallman (London), Zborowski (Paris) and Mapfre (Madrid).