José María Mallol Suazo

JOSÉ MARÍA MALLOL SUAZO (Barcelona, 1910 - 1986).
"Seated woman with a bouquet of flowers", ca. 1940.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 72 x 54,5 cm; 86 x 67,5 cm (frame).

Born in the bosom of a very religious family, Mallol Suazo was formed in the School of La Lonja, in Barcelona, where he was a disciple of Félix Mestres and Ramón Calsina between 1929 and 1935. He was a cartoonist as well as a painter, and published humorous illustrations in "En Patufet", "Virolet" and "L'Esquitx", magazines with which he collaborated since his student years. A congenital deformity in his feet, which made him walk with difficulty, prevented him from developing the landscape theme, as he could not move to make the copy from life. That is why he opted for other themes, such as still life or portraits. The first exhibition of his work took place at the Salon of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 1936, months before the outbreak of the Civil War. That same year he was awarded a prize at the Spring Exhibition in Barcelona. The war forced the dispersion of his family, but Mallol remained in Barcelona, where he devoted himself entirely to painting and obtained, in 1938, the Nonell Painting Prize, awarded by the Sala Tardor. In 1945 he became a member of the group of artists of the Sala Parés, a gallery where he met the collector Josep Omar Gelpi, who became his art dealer from then on. Considered one of the most promising young Catalan painters, in 1953 he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona with a nude, and in 1959 he visited Brazil for the first time, the country where his wife came from and to which he would travel several times throughout his life. Far from the feeling of "risk and adventure" in a plastic sense, Mallol did not allow himself to be dragged along by the prevailing artistic currents, always remaining faithful to his own realistic-poetic language. In 1987, a year after his death, the Sala Parés dedicated a large tribute exhibition to him, an anthology of his work. Mallol is represented in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Museum of Valls, the Deu Font Museum in El Vendrell, the Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona and the Abbey of Montserrat, as well as in important collections such as Caixa Terrassa, Caixa de Catalunya, Marta María Millet and Modest Rodríguez Cruells.