Arcadi Mas i Fondevila

ARCADI MAS I FONDEVILA (Barcelona, 1852 - Sitges, Barcelona, 1934).
"In the Bar".
Charcoal on paper.
Signed in the lower right-hand corner.
Size: 45 x 62 cm; 75.5 x 95 cm (frame).
Painter and draughtsman, founder of the luminist school of Sitges, Arcadi Mas i Fondevila trained at the La Lonja School in Barcelona, where his teachers were Antonio Caba and Claudio Lorenzale. In 1873 he travelled to Madrid, visited the Prado Museum and exhibited a painting in the Platería Martínez room, which was later bought by King Alfonso XII. Two years later he won the first Fortuny scholarship from the Barcelona City Council, which enabled him to further his studies by travelling to Italy on a scholarship between 1876 and 1886. During these years, Arcadi Mas i Fondevila visited Venice, Rome, Naples and Capri, while taking part in several group exhibitions at the Sala Parés in Barcelona. Ascribed to the Neapolitan naturalist school of Domenico Morelli, in 1885 he also took part in the exhibition of the Centre of Watercolourists in Barcelona. On his return to Catalonia, his friend Joan Roig Soler encouraged him to visit Sitges, and from this meeting and acquaintance the Sitges Luminist school was born, a pictorial current that brought together other artists such as Joaquim de Miró, Antoni Almirall and Joan Batlle. In 1887 he took part in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he was awarded a medal. He also took part in the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona the following year, winning a first medal. Mas i Fondevila won two more medals at the Barcelona Fine Arts Exhibitions of 1894 and 1896, and in 1899 he became a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc. In 1900 he opened the Rovira Salon in Barcelona with his first individual exhibition, a show that established him as a master of pastel painting. During this period, Mas i Fondevila also collaborated as a draughtsman in "La Ilustració Catalana". In 1928 he was commissioned to paint one of the murals in the Sala de Sant Jordi in the Palau de la Generalitat in Barcelona, and in 1932 he again held a solo exhibition, this time in the Pinacoteca gallery. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the Sitges Study Group devoted an anthological exhibition to him at the Maricel Museum (1985). He is represented at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Maricel, the Cau Ferrat and Sitges Town Hall, as well as in other museums and private collections.