Joan Busquets

JOAN BUSQUETS I JANÉ (Barcelona, 1874 - 1949).
Pair of modernist lounge armchairs.
Signed.
Measurements: 88 x 79 x 54 cm.
In this pair of armchairs Joan Busquets combines two styles with many points in common, modernism and Louis XV or French rococo. Both are anti-classical languages, characterized by the soft, sinuous and organic curve and the naturalistic decoration. Thus, we see a moving structural profile, determined by curves and countercurves, entirely gilded in the manner of the eighteenth century, although evidencing an organic character more typical of modernism, which resembles the furniture to a living animal, breaking the conventions of rococo. The legs are cabriole, and the carved decorations that dot the structure are eminently vegetal, with a slightly asymmetrical layout, again typical of both modernism and rococo.
Furniture designer and decorator, Joan Busquets is currently considered one of the most representative figures of Catalan modernism. He began his training in the family workshop, and then studied at the Escuela de La Llotja in Barcelona, where his teachers were Guitart and Lostaló. In the 1895-96 academic year he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel around Spain, which he obtained thanks to a project for a Renaissance-style bookcase-cabinet. He exhibited furniture projects for the first time at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1896. The workshop of Joan Busquets was one of the most outstanding of modernist Catalonia and is currently, together with the production of Gaspar Homar, the most representative testimony of the furniture and decoration of Catalan modernism. He was president of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas between 1918 and 1921, and supervised the manufacture of furniture for Gaudí's Casa Calvet. Works by Busquets can currently be found in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Güell Palace in Barcelona, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Catalan Modernism in Barcelona, among others, as well as in several important private collections.