Josep Bartolí

JOSEP BARTOLÍ (Barcelona, 1910-New York, 1995).
"Abstract", ca. 1946.
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower margin.
Provenance: Estate of Irena Urdang de Tours (art dealer and Holocaust survivor).
Measurements: 14 x 9,5 cm; 26,5 x 22 cm (frame).

Every plot of Josep Bartolí's life could have been extracted from a gripping novel. His drawings of denunciation would echo his time in concentration camps, from whose death he ended up escaping by jumping off a train. But he also experimented with abstraction, especially while in New York and Mexico. This painting ("Abstract") was probably made in New York in 1946, the year he met Frida Kalho and they fell in love, as evidenced by the love letters they wrote to each other (25 passionate letters from Fridha are preserved). The Mexican painter was in the U.S. city recovering from spinal surgery. Later, they continued their romance in Mexico. Stylistically, "Abstraction" is close to the postulates of abstract expressionism, as the artist frequented the circle of Pollock and Rothko in those years.

Painter, draftsman and set designer. A disciple of Salvador Alarma and Tastàs, he collaborated with various publications (La Humanidad, La Opinión, La Esquella de la Torratxa...) as a political cartoonist. At a very young age he began to work as a cartoonist in the press and became involved in trade unionism in Barcelona at the time. Between 1933 and 1934 he presented an exhibition of drawings in Barcelona that was very successful. He was one of the organizers of the Sindicato de Dibujantes de Cataluña and of the UGT. leader in 1936. Towards the end of the Spanish Civil War he went into exile in France. Arrested by the Gestapo, he was sent to the Dachau camp, but on the way he escaped by jumping off the train and, after a long journey, he arrived in Mexico. There he resumed his pictorial activity, came into contact with the environment of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, of whom he was a lover, and participated in the founding of the Prisse gallery. In the United States he was the first cartoonist of Hollyday magazine, standing out as one of the most sought-after cartoonists of the time, he made sets for historical films in Hollywood and was part of the 10th Street group, along with Willem de Kooning, Kline, Pollock and Rothko. In 1973 he received the Mark Rothko Award for Fine Arts.3 Among his illustrated books are Caliban (1971), The black man in America (1975) and Campos de concentración (Mexico, 1943; Madrid, Spain, 2006). This last title, based on texts by the Catalan journalist Molins i Fábrega, collects his extensive documentary series of pen drawings about his experience in the concentration camps.