José Segrelles Albert

JOSÉ SEGRELLES ALBERT, (Albaida, 1885 - 1969).
"The fugitive", at 15 years old.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, titled and dated in lower right corner.
Measurements: 95 x 71 cm; 122 x 97 cm (frame).

This painting, made by José Segrelles at the age of 15, is a copy of a work by his master Francisco Legua. Segrelles copied a work with the same type of drawing, colors, shadows and proportion, showing that he was already a great artist who would later surpass his master's work in quality.

José Segrelles, also known as "the blue painter", was trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, later passing through the workshops of Joaquín Sorolla and Isidoro Garnelo. He completed his studies at the Lonja de Barcelona where his instructor was Antonio Cava. He was a great painter and illustrator, whose career began in 1905 in the city of Barcelona, where he worked in magazines such as "Seguí", "Salvat", "Granados" or "Molina". Later in 1929 he moved to New York where he lived for six years, a stay that allowed him to develop as an artist and work in magazines such as "American Magazine", "The American Weekly" or "The Cosmopolitan". He carried out a series of works in which the intense colors and the stroke used stand out, adding to it the sense of fantasy, intention, representation and thematic. His work has followed an evolutionary path in which the different techniques apprehended by the artist intervene, making reference to what today we would call "mixed technique". The colorist works were intervened by watercolors, tempera, gouaches, pencils and inks. His work as an illustrator included commissions for the texts of Dante, Edgar Allan Poe, the Thousand and One Nights and Don Quixote of La Mancha. His prolific work was recognized with awards and mentions such as the Gold Medal at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and, posthumously, the Gold Medal for Merit in Work. His work is preserved in various private collections, in his House Museum in Albaida (Valencia), as well as being exhibited in Barcelona.