Carmen Navarra Pruna

CARMEN NAVARRA PRUNA (Sant Just Desvern, Barcelona, 1933-2023).
"El vestit de vellut".
Mixed media and collage.
Signed in the lower left margin.
Measurements: 94 x 62 cm; 108 x 78 cm (frame).

Navarra Pruna started drawing when she was still a child, and when she was only eleven years old she won the first national prize for illustration of fairy tales, organized by a publishing house. She began her career painting images of Virgins and angels, which led her to work in the publishing house Luis Talleda. Although her greatest dream would have been to attend a School of Fine Arts, she had to continue working on her own, training herself in a self-taught way. An excellent draughtswoman, her oils, waxes and pastels clearly show her temperament as an illustrator. Her meticulous art, of charming meticulousness, captures scenes and stylized figures, of marked romanticism. Likewise, her landscapes and gardens, clear and transparent, reflect a decorative style with exotic reminiscences, full of grace and with a great evocative power. One of his great themes has always been the woman, who he works with true respect for formal laws, with an exact sense of measurements and balance, fixing on the canvas states of the soul rather than simple portraits.