Joan Busquets

JOAN BUSQUETS I JANÉ (Barcelona, 1874 - 1949).
Pair of French style armchairs Louis XV style.
Carved and gilded wood. Petit Point upholstery.
Exhibits wear consistent with age and use. Restoration needed.
Measurements: 88 x 78 x 50 cm.

Joan Busquets replaces in this pair of large armchairs the modernist style that catapulted him to fame to enter a language directly inspired by the French cabinetmaking of the reign of Louis XVI. Thus we are faced with a pair of majestic armchairs characterized by their rotund and stylized structure, of clear Rococo inspiration, with frequent elements in the ornamental Louis XV background.

Furniture designer and decorator, Joan Busquets is currently considered one of the most representative figures of Catalan modernism. He began his training in the family workshop, and then studied at the Escuela de La Llotja in Barcelona, where his teachers were Guitart and Lostaló. In the 1895-96 academic year he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel around Spain, which he obtained thanks to a project for a Renaissance-style bookcase-cabinet. He exhibited furniture projects for the first time at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1896. The workshop of Joan Busquets was one of the most outstanding of modernist Catalonia and is currently, together with the production of Gaspar Homar, the most representative testimony of the furniture and decoration of Catalan modernism. He was president of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas between 1918 and 1921, and supervised the manufacture of furniture for Gaudí's Casa Calvet. Works by Busquets can currently be found in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Güell Palace in Barcelona, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Catalan Modernism in Barcelona, among others, as well as in several important private collections.