Francisco Farreras

FRANCISCO FARRERAS RICART (Barcelona, 1927).
Untitled, 1981.
Collage on panel.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Auctioned at Christie's (October 6, 2004).
Measurements: 50.5 x 50.5 cm; 70.5 x 70.5 cm (frame).

Francisco Farreras began his artistic activity at an early age under the direction of the painter Antonio Gómez Cano and Mariano de Cossío, at the School of Arts and Crafts in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In 1943 he settled in Madrid as a disciple of Vázquez Díaz, and studied Fine Arts at the San Fernando School in Madrid, obtaining in 1949 the title of Professor of Drawing. In 1951 he is selected for the I Bienal Hispanoamericana, and two years later he travels to Paris, where he comes into contact with geometric abstraction. Between 1952 and 1954 he made several study trips to Paris, Belgium and Holland. It was in 1954 when he began his professional artistic career, participating in many group exhibitions and beginning to hold personal exhibitions both in Spain and abroad. In 1966 he moved back to Madrid, after living in the United States for several years. During these years he was selected by the Modern Art Museum and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as by the Tate Gallery in London, to be included in their exhibitions of Spanish painting. In 1982 he commissioned a large collage mural for the Madrid airport. His retrospective exhibitions include the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid (1999), and his work has been shown at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Tate Gallery in London, the Carnegie Institute in Los Angeles, the Haags Museum in The Hague, the Hamilton in Toronto, the McNay in San Antonio, Texas, the Moderne in Stockholm, the National Museums of Modern Art in Paris, Helsinki, Madrid, Seville and Tokyo, the Guggenheim in New York and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, among many others.