Pere Pruna

PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1977).
"Skiers".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower corner.
Measurements: 95 x 75,5 cm; 112 x 92,5 cm (frame).

With great formal economy and an implacable chromatic sobriety, that in this oil painting is practically reduced to three colors, Pere Pruna manages to make us participants of the emotional stamp of his feminine portraits. Pruna's women are characterized by their simple elegance and a melancholy that safeguards their enigma.

This is an enigmatic and erotic scene, both attributes that Pere Pruna used to play with in his best compositions. A clothed man embraces a naked woman in the middle of an icy and solitary landscape. Both look at each other wordlessly with their fine features. Posture and gesture shun naturalism, seeking instead a composition that prioritizes visual harmony and symbolic impact over realistic narrative. The purity and coldness of the white contrasts with the warm tones of the skin and clothing, emphasizing their corporeality.

Pere Pruna studied at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. After beginning to exhibit in Barcelona when he was still very young, he traveled to Paris in 1921, where he was helped and guided by Picasso. In the French capital he held a successful solo exhibition at the Galerie Percier, and came into contact with intellectuals such as Cocteau, Drieu la Rochelle, Max Jacob and others, with whom he founded the magazine "Philosophie" in 1924. Serge Diaghilev proposed him to create the sets and costumes for the ballet "Les matelots" in 1925. Since then he also worked on other musical works. In 1928 he obtained the second absolute prize in the exhibition of the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburg and later, on his return to Barcelona, he obtained other awards such as the competition "Montserrat seen by the Catalan artists" (1931) or the Nonell Prize (1936). The latter was surrounded by controversy, because Pruna obtained it for his oil painting "El vi de Chios", for which he used as a model a photograph published in a Parisian pornographic magazine. In view of the commotion caused, Pruna renounced the prize, but the jury ratified its decision. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pruna settled in Paris and continued with his international exhibition activity, with an outstanding exhibition organized in London in 1937. His style, centered on a graceful and stylized female figure, is based on the clear delicacy of the pink and "neoclassical" Picasso, and reveals a certain parallelism with the Italian Novencento. Pere Pruna is represented in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, in the MNAC or in the Museum of Montserrat, as well as in important public and private collections.