José María Sert

JOSÉ MARÍA SERT (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945).
"Garlands", ca. 1900-1915.
Preparatory charcoal drawing on paper.
Attached classification card of the Institut Amatller d'Art Hispànic.
Measurements: 59 x 87 cm; 84 x 113 cm (frame).
Due to its format and composition, this preparatory drawing was possibly conceived by José María Sert to solve the pictorial decoration of a dome, as a result of the multiple ornamental pictorial commissions that the artist received throughout his career.
Trained with Benito Mercadé and Pere Borrell, Sert was a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, and later a disciple of A. de Riquer. In 1900 Torras i Bages commissioned a large mural decoration for the cathedral of Vic, of which he presented sketches and preparatory canvases in 1905 and 1907 in Barcelona and Paris, of which this piece is an example. Through his exhibitions abroad, he soon acquired extraordinary prestige among the French and English aristocracy, for whom he created sumptuous decorations. In 1908 he decorated the Sala de los Pasos Perdidos of the Palace of Justice in Barcelona, and in 1910 he presented at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the mural decoration of the ballroom of the Marquis of Alella (Barcelona) and decorated the music room of the Princess of Polignac in Paris. Two years later he exhibited an important group of works at the Salon in the French capital. In the following years he worked for Queen Victoria Eugenia (Santander) and for Robert Rotschild (Chantilly), and exhibited individually in London, in the Agnew room. In 1920 he married Maria Godebska, "Misia", a muse of the Parisian artistic scene, in Paris. He made new murals for important houses in Park Lane (England), Buenos Aires, Palm Beach and Paris, and in 1926 he made, before a great expectation, an exhibition of his works for the cathedral of Vic the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 1927, with the support of his friend and protector Francesc Cambó, he completed the main part of the cathedral's decoration, which was completed with the construction of the lunettes between 1928 and 1929. In 1930 he was named academician of San Fernando, and in the following years he worked all over the world, creating important murals such as those of the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the chapel of the Palacio de Liria in Madrid or the council hall of the League of Nations in Geneva. He was the most eminent decorative painter of his time, and his style was characterized by a great imagination at the service of a rhetorical language influenced by orientalism and Goya's expressionism, with a chromaticism almost exclusively based on golden and sepia tones.