Francesc Gimeno

FRANCESC GIMENO I ARASA (Tortosa, Tarragona, 1858 - Barcelona, 1927).
"Female portrait.
Charcoal drawing on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 28,5 x 21,5 cm; 40 x 34 cm (frame).

Painter and draftsman, Francesc Gimeno began his training in Tortosa at the age of fourteen. In 1880 he settled in Barcelona and alternated his work as a painter and decorator with that of an academy he created with several friends. In 1884 he traveled to Madrid and entered the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he was a disciple of Carlos de Haes. In the Prado Museum he admired the great masters of the XVII century, especially Velázquez. On his return to Barcelona in 1889, he suddenly rejected the contracts offered to him, and devoted himself once again to decorative painting. Nevertheless, he took part in some exhibitions, winning prizes such as honorary diplomas at the Barcelona exhibition of 1894 and the National Exhibition of Madrid in 1904. In 1915, at the insistence of Dalmau, Mallol and Jori, he organized his first individual exhibition, in the gallery that the former directed in Barcelona. Francesc Gimeno is represented in the Prado Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, the National Museum of Art of Catalonia and the J. Sala collection.