Joan Brotat

JOAN BROTAT VILANOVA (Barcelona, 1923 - 1990).
Untitled.
Oil on cardboard.
Signed in the upper left corner.
Measurements: 30 x 48 cm; 33 x 52 cm (frame).
Brotat studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the Ateneo Obrero of Barcelona. He held his first exhibition at the initiative of Angel Marsà, who invited him to participate in 1950 in his Cycle of Experimental Art. That same year he made his individual debut at the El Jardín gallery in Barcelona. From then on his work could be seen frequently in the Salones de Mayo and Octubre in Barcelona, and finally he made the international leap to more than a hundred exhibitions around the world. After a first stage characterized by a language of modernist influence and conventional themes, his style evolved towards a primitivism that made him very famous. Brotat adopted the point of view of the old Catalan Romanesque painters to the narration of contemporary life, bringing an apparent naivety to his compositions that earned him notable success. During these years he also experimented with informalism, collage and gestural art, within the Dau al Set group. In the sixties, when he returned to figuration, his style was consolidated, characterized by figures with large melancholic faces, the application of colors in flat spots and the absence of perspective in his compositions. His distinctions include the Grand Prize of the Mediterranean Countries of Alexandria (1961), the Rafael Zabaleta gold medal and the City of Tarrasa Prize, among others. Brotat is represented in the CDAN of the Beulas Foundation of Huesca, in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao, the Museum of Modern Art of Madrid and Alexandria and the Municipal Museum of Valls.