Dionís Bennàssar

DIONÍS BENNÀSSAR MULET (Pollença, Mallorca, 1904 - 1967).
"Vase".
Oil on cardboard.
It has slight stains on the paint and damage to the frame.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 37 x 44 cm; 54 x 62,5 cm (frame).
Born in the bosom of a peasant family, Dionís Bennàssar already shows since he was a child a special inclination for drawing. After attending primary school, during his adolescence he moved to Palma, supported by his parents, to receive drawing and painting lessons, studies that he alternated with a job as a mechanic. However, his academic apprenticeship was not long; his great freedom of ideas and pictorial concepts clashed with the corseted classicism of the time, and he finally returned to Pollença. Enlisted in the army, at the age of eighteen he is wounded in the war of Morocco and returns to Mallorca. The wound received in the clavicle disabled his right hand, which was not an obstacle for his determined will to devote himself to painting, using his left hand from then on. From that moment on, he would focus his efforts on exalting the beauty of well-known and loved landscapes. With his brushes, Bennàssar brought to Mallorcan painting a new aspect characterized by a grandiloquent vision of nature, a vibrant chromatism and a long and loose brushstroke. Around 1926 the artist came into contact with Anglada Camarasa, who in 1913 had settled in Pollença, followed by a large number of his disciples from Paris, among them Tito Cittadini, who would become a great friend and teacher of the Mallorcan. Dionís Bennàssar participated actively in the social and cultural life of the town. He was a popular and appreciated character, and on many occasions he was seen in the Juma bar, where he enjoyed chatting with his friends. He was an artist who enjoyed his town and its people. Due to this fact and for health reasons, he did not leave Pollença, although he did not lack opportunities. In 1940 he held a solo exhibition at the Costa de Palma gallery, presented by his friend Cittadini. Cittadini would say on that occasion that "His art is something more than rhetoric; it is sensibility, palpitation, beauty, in the aristocratic sense of the word...". Bennàssar managed to get the critics to turn in his favor, earning a scholarship from the Diputación for a study trip to the main Spanish cities. The difficult years were behind him, and the artist began to enjoy an economic stability that allowed him to buy a house and, in 1943, to get married. From this moment on, two stages can be distinguished in the artist's career: a first period of technical experimentation and a stage of full maturity, exuberant in its colorfulness. Mainly focused on landscape, he also tackled portraits and even some mythological themes. At present, Bennàssar is mainly represented in the house-museum that bears his name in Pollença, Mallorca.