Emilio Grau Sala

EMILIO GRAU SALA (Barcelona, 1911-1975).
"Untitled".
Watercolor.
Signed.
Measurements: 16 x 21 cm.
Son of the draftsman Juan Grau Miró, Grau Sala combines his attendance to the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona with an essentially self-taught formation. In 1930 he made his first exhibition at the Badriñas gallery in Barcelona. At the beginning of the Civil War, in 1936, he moved to Paris, where he settled in the Spanish artists' colony of Montparnasse. That same year he was awarded the first Carnegie Prize. In the twenty-five years he stayed there, he was closely acquainted with the avant-garde, although he always opted for a colorist figuration, derived from impressionism and fauvism. It was a path already taken by the commercial circuit, surpassed in terms of novelty by cubism and surrealism, but which was kept alive at a high level thanks to masters such as Bonnard, Chagall and Dufy. In fact, he soon became known in Paris as the successor of the Impressionist spirit and values, directly related to Bonnard and Vuillard. This stylistic choice of Grau Sala conditioned that of his wife, Ángeles Santos, who abandoned her singular surrealism for a more conventional landscape, a decision that critics did not hesitate to regret. The success of his style led Grau Sala to devote himself also to graphic work (engravings, lithographs, illustrations for novels, posters...), as well as theatrical sets. The grace and finesse of his characters, the liveliness of the colors and the elegant atmosphere of the environments that he captured made him reap great success and recognition all over the world. He held several solo exhibitions, mainly in Barcelona and Paris, but also in cities such as New York, Toulouse, London and Los Angeles. In 1963 he returned to Barcelona, when the stagnant figuration of Franco's Spain began to be challenged by Oteiza, Chillida, Tàpies and the collective "El Paso". However, he remained faithful to his style, and until his death in 1975 he worked within his own personal line, centered on his favorite themes, female figures, interiors and landscapes, in a vaguely classical, nostalgic time setting of the nineteenth century. After his death, and for more than a decade, Grau Sala was overshadowed by the multiple novelties that were emerging in democratic Spain, but from the 1990s onwards, the new boom in mid-level collecting relaunched Grau Sala, as he was understood as an interpreter of Impressionism in a Spanish key. Works by Emilio Grau Sala are kept in the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art and the Óscar Domínguez Institute of Contemporary Art and Culture.