Matías Palau Ferré

MATÍAS PALAU FERRÉ (Montblanc, 1921-2000).
"Female portrait.
Oil on panel.
Signed in the upper right margin.
Measurements: 92 x 73 cm; 116 x 96,5 cm (frame).

In this work, Palau Ferré condenses the intimate tenderness of childhood in a refined image, where the form is reduced to its essence and the color vibrates by its contrasted intensity. The figure, a girl with an elongated neck and oval face, evokes Mannerist stylizations as much as certain Picasso echoes, but drifting towards a surrealism of a magical nature. The girl's large green eyes are mirrors open to a contemplative inner world. The dove, symbol of peace and promise, becomes a metaphorical counterweight to the human figure, framed by a window sill, a space that insinuates a transition between the dream world and the real world. The work distills Farré's characteristic style: lyrical post-cubism, in which geometry is neither hard nor intellectual, but organic and emotional, and color functions as a carrier of affection. The drawing synthesizes and structures, while the chromatic planes construct the figure with great economy of means. The light seems to illuminate the girl from within, immersing her in an aura of introspective stillness, set against a black background.

Palau Ferré studied at the Real Academia Catalana de Bellas Artes de San Jorge, Barcelona and moved to Paris in 1957 where he was one of Pablo Picasso's disciples. He began with some cubist-inspired works on oil canvases. Over the years he also did some ceramics and some sculptures. After coming to fame in Spain he exhibited in several foreign countries, including France, the UK and the USA. His most important works are Woman and Moon, Montblanch and Guer-Blanc. Palau Ferré achieved notoriety due to his sudden mood swings that led him to burn his oil canvases in 1974 after a dispute he had with a gallery owner. As a protest against what he defined as "art prostitution", he continued to systematically burn all of his oil paintings that came within his reach over a period of about twenty years. He usually scattered the ashes of his paintings ceremonially in the Francolí River in his homeland, but some of the ashes of his canvases were saved and became part of an art exhibition in Pennsylvania, USA.1 His prolonged protest led him to stop painting oil canvases and to prohibit the few that survived from being exhibited until 1989. In his last artistic phase he painted only in India ink on thick paper following a technique of his own invention. He always signed his works with his two surnames "Palau Ferré". Palau Ferré died on January 1, 2000 in Montblanch and the town council named a street after him that same year. Months later, the Palau Ferré Art Museum was inaugurated, where some of his works are exhibited, including some rare canvases that were saved from burning.