Celso Lagar Arroyo

CELSO LAGAR ARROYO (Ciudad Rodrigo, León, 1891 - Seville, 1966).
"Clown in the circus", 1952.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
With original label on the back of CRANE KALMAN GALLERY of London.
Measurements: 55 x 38.5 cm; 70 x 53 cm (frame).
Celso Lagar's artistic imaginary involved a wide iconography. One of his best known series was the circus scenes, a very fashionable theme in the early twentieth century, became a key motif in Celso Lagar's painting. Previously, great masters such as Edgar Degás, George Seurat or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, turned their attention to this eccentric spectacle, immortalizing in their canvases the bohemian and free life, far from social conventions, that surrounded the world of the circus. Directly influenced by Pablo Picasso's cubism, Lagar's language is reminiscent of fauvist and even Goyaesque styles, although his formal moderation, beyond the School of Paris, places him within a progressive modernity, rather than within a strict avant-garde. In the work that concerns us, "Porto du Cirque Medrano", Lagar pours melancholy and sweetness in equal parts. We find ourselves in front of a full-length portrait of a clown from the Cirque Medrano in Paris, a meeting place for artists such as Picasso and Braque in the Montmartre district, who looks directly at the viewer, in an interior crowded with the props of the show. The palette of colors used, sober but daring, denotes Lagar's pictorial skill.
Celso Lagar began his training in the field of sculpture with Miguel Blay in Madrid. His teacher advised him to travel to Paris to complete his studies and, after spending a year in Barcelona, he traveled to the French capital for the first time in 1911. Lagar's career, both personally and artistically, can be divided into four distinct stages, marked by the two World Wars. The first of these periods is that of apprenticeship, in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, in contact with artists such as Amadeo Modigliani. This stage comes to an end when he is forced to leave Paris at the outbreak of the Great War. He settled in Barcelona but held several exhibitions in the French capital, which served as a letter of introduction upon his return to the city after the war, in 1919. By then Lagar is already a consolidated artist, and settles definitively in Paris. He regularly exhibited in the best Parisian galleries (Berthe Weil, Percier, Zborowski, Barreiro, Brouant, Druet), his style reached its personal maturity and he devoted himself fully to painting, leaving sculpture behind. He developed a painting focused on very specific themes: still lifes, Spanish themes, landscapes and circus scenes. After the period of avant-garde influences (cubist, fauvist, etc.), Lagar reached his own style, marked by the influences of Goya and Picasso. Gradually his palette cools down, but his favorite themes remain the same, and his recognition by the public and critics increases. The beginning of World War II marked the end of Lagar's golden age. He emigrated to the French Pyrenees, and his return to the recently liberated city of Paris did not have the repercussions he had hoped for, as the collecting public demanded new contents and modes. After his wife fell ill in 1956, Lagar fell into a deep depression and was admitted to a psychiatric center. He definitively stopped painting and in 1964 he returned to Spain, spending his last years at his sister's house in Seville. Lagar is represented in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco Casa Lis, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Petit Palais in Geneva, the Fine Arts of La Rochelle, Castres and Honfleur (France) and in prestigious collections such as Crane Kallman (London), the Zborowski (Paris) or the Mapfre (Madrid).