Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Homage to El Greco", ca. 1965.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed.
Measurements: 66 x 50,5 cm; 78 x 62 cm (frame).

The figure of El Greco occupies a decisive place in the work of Antoni Clavé. It was not a mere homage what he carried out in drawings, engravings and in a series of paintings of the sixties of which the excellent oil painting that occupies us is part, but a path of plastic and conceptual self-exploration. In this drawing he evokes the ruffed portraits and the elongated facial ovals of El Greco, although he transfigures the model, turning it practically into an abstract work. "The Gentleman with his Hand on his Chest" and "Portrait of a Painter" were often references for the Catalan painter, who also called upon the black and dark shades of the Cretan painter. The ruff has been transformed into a sort of pale garland that haloes the entire head. The whole suggests a spectral presence, which can be translated as a tribute to an artist who left an indelible mark on future generations. The work evokes the drama and spiritual intensity of El Greco's paintings, although Clavé translates them into a more modern and experimental language.

Antoni Clavé is one of the most relevant figures of Spanish contemporary art. Trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Jordi in Barcelona, Clavé was initially dedicated to advertising graphics, illustration and decorative arts. In 1936 he took an active part in the Civil War, in the Republican ranks, which led him to go into exile in France at the end of the war. That same year, 1939, he exhibits the drawings he made on the battlefields. He settled in Paris, where he met Vuillard, Bonnard and Picasso. He already enjoyed great international prestige at the time when he began to be recognized in Spain, after his exhibition at the Gaspar Gallery in Barcelona in 1956. At the same time, he made illustrations for the work "Gargantua and Pantagruel", which led him to become familiar with medieval iconography. He received awards at the Hallimark in New York in 1948, at the Venice Biennial in 1954 and at the International Biennial in Tokyo in 1957. In 1984 the Spanish State recognized his artistic value with the exhibition of more than one hundred of his works in the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. That same year he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Clavé's work can be found, among many others, in the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.