Pere Pruna

PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904–1977).
“Landscape,” 1968.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
With a Sala Parés label on the back.
Measurements: 68.5 x 85 cm; 85 x 101 cm (frame).

A largely self-taught artist, Pere Pruna completed his training at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. After beginning to exhibit in Barcelona at a very young age, he traveled to Paris in 1921, where he received support and guidance from Picasso. In the French capital, he held a successful solo exhibition at the Galerie Percier and came into contact with intellectuals such as Cocteau, Drieu la Rochelle, Max Jacob, and others, with whom he founded the magazine “Philosophie” in 1924. Serge Diaghilev, who visited one of his exhibitions, also commissioned him to create the sets and costumes for the ballet “Les matelots” in 1925. From then on, he also worked on other musical productions, such as “La vie de Polichinele” (1934) and “Oriane” (1938), among others. In 1928, he won second prize at the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburgh, and upon his return to Barcelona, he received other awards, such as the prize in the “Montserrat as Seen by Catalan Artists” competition (1931) and the Nonell Prize (1936). The latter prize was mired in controversy, as Pruna won it for his oil painting “El vi de Chios,” for which he used a photograph published in a Parisian pornographic magazine as a model. Faced with the uproar this caused, Pruna renounced the prize, but the jury upheld its decision. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pruna settled in Paris and continued his international exhibition activities, notably with an exhibition organized in London in 1937. At the same time, he worked for Ridruejo’s propaganda services, creating works such as the poster commemorating the enactment of the Labor Act, and Eugenio d’Ors, National Director of Fine Arts, included him in the Spanish delegation to the 1938 Venice Biennale. After the war, he combined exhibitions of easel paintings with mural painting, a genre in which his works at the Montserrat monastery were particularly celebrated. In 1965, he won the City of Barcelona Prize, and three years later he was named a member of the Far de Sant Cristòfor Academy. His style, centered on a graceful and stylized female figure, draws on the clear delicacy of Picasso’s “Rose Period” and “Neoclassical” works, and reveals a certain parallel with the Italian Novecento, placing him squarely within the classicist movement that emerged in Western art following the first wave of the avant-garde—a movement championed by his friend Cocteau. Pruna focused on portraiture and, above all, on the female figure, creating images marked by great delicacy and understated distinction. His depictions are characterized by a stylized and ethereal line, and they resonate with the return to order that followed the rupture brought about by Cubism in France, thus linking directly to the avant-garde movements. Pere Pruna’s work is currently on view at the Montserrat Museum, where a space is named after him, as well as at the MACBA in Barcelona and the Maricel Museum in Sitges, among others.