Francesc Gimeno i Arasa

FRANCESC GIMENO I ARASA (Tortosa, Tarragona, 1858 - Barcelona, 1927).
"Male bust".
Charcoal drawing on paper.
Signed in the lower right area.
Measurements: 62 x 43 cm; 79 x 59 cm (frame).
Painter and draftsman, Francesc Gimeno began his training in Tortosa at the age of fourteen. In 1880 he settles in Barcelona and alternates the work of painter-decorator with that of an academy that he created with several friends. In 1884 he travels to Madrid and enters the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he was a disciple of Carlos de Haes. In the Prado Museum he admired the great masters of the XVII century, especially Velázquez. On his return to Barcelona, in 1889, he suddenly rejected the contracts offered to him and returned to decorative painting. This decision may have been due to his intention to dispense with any kind of patronage other than public recognition. He remained away from the artistic environment for twenty-five years, but he did not stop painting and drawing in his free time, and it is precisely from this period that some of his best works date. Nevertheless, he participated in some exhibitions, winning prizes such as honorary diplomas in the Barcelona exhibition of 1894 and the National Exhibition of Madrid in 1904. In 1915, at the insistence of Dalmau, Mallol and Jori, he organized his first individual exhibition in the gallery that the former directed in Barcelona. Francesc Gimeno is represented in the Prado Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, the National Museum of Art of Catalonia and the J. Sala collection.