José Cusachs

JOSEP CUSACHS (Montpellier, France, 1851 - Barcelona, 1908).
"Transfer of the Wounded, 1890.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
It presents slight faults in the area of the sky.
Size: 75 x 120 cm; 90 x 135 cm (frame).
The pictorial genius of Cusachs lay above all in his tremendous plastic and conceptual sensibility to divert the military theme (in which traditionally the epic celebration had prevailed) towards intimate situations, samples of comradeship, and to show the suffering in the battlefield. He never painted the wars themselves but focused on the before or after, their antechambers or their sad backyards: here we see soldiers carrying their wounded comrades on stretchers. The lowered heads, the slow advance of the retreating army, the cloaks covering tired shoulders, the uniforms glinting metallic under a leaden sky... make for a scene of great emotional intensity. The mastery of the drawing and the bold use of light are translated into soft chromatic shifts. The ability to capture the joint movement of large masses of people set in a landscape tarnished with melancholy is another of the attributes of this great painter.
José Cusachs was born accidentally in France, as his parents were travelling there, but his art and his life were always linked to two places: Barcelona and Mataró. In 1865, after passing a competitive examination, he entered the Artillery Academy for a military career. However, in 1882, after a brilliant career that led him to become a captain in the army for war merits, he asked for retirement to devote himself to painting. Trained in Barcelona under the guidance of Simón Gómez, he completed his artistic studies with a stay in Paris at the studio of Édouard Détaille, one of the greatest experts in military themes, a genre that became Cusachs's favourite. During these years he made his work known through solo exhibitions, such as those he held regularly from 1884 onwards at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, which were always a great success with both sales and critics. By 1890 he was already a regular exhibitor at the gallery, where he showed new works every week. The bond between Cusachs and the Sala Parés was so deep, in fact, that after the painter's death the gallery fell into a period of absolute decadence. Cusachs also took part in official competitions; in 1887 he obtained notable recognition at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid with three paintings, one of which was acquired by the regent Maria Cristina ("En el campo de maniobras" ("On the Manoeuvre Field"). In 1891 he took part in the Berlin Exhibition and won the Gold Medal for his work "Division Manoeuvres". Cusachs was also a celebrated military portraitist, and painted General Prim, King Alfonso XIII in military uniform and Mexican President Profirio Díaz, among others. The bulk of his work is in the Museo de Arte Moderno in Madrid and the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña.