Antoni Costa

ANTONI COSTA TORRAS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1965).
"Landscape with figures".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the upper right-hand corner and on the back.
Measurements: 67 x 98 cm; 72 x 102 cm (frame).
Antoni Costa trained in Buenos Aires, at the Círculo de Sant Lluc in Barcelona and at the FAD. A friend and colleague of Sandalinas and Gasch, he exhibited in Barcelona from 1928 and, after the post-war period, also in Mallorca. In 1955 he was awarded a prize in the Mediterranean Games competition. Considered to be one of the best representatives of social realism in Catalonia, he focused his work on the themes of labour, the wretched, prostitutes, immigrants, etc., with a language that reacted against avant-garde academicism and the concept of art for art's sake. There are three stages in his production. The first, which lasted until 1938, is related to Cubism, and especially to the figures of La Fresnaye and Léger. Between 1939 and 1958 he came closer to Marie Blanchard, and finally evolved into a third stage, motivated by his failure in the eyes of the official critics and the new avant-garde, in which he shunned any public manifestation, focusing on works of more conventional technique and cruder subject matter, partially included in the exhibition devoted to him in Barcelona in 1966.