Josep de Togores

JOSEP DE TOGORES LLACH (Cerdanyola del Vallès, 1893 - Barcelona, 1970).
"Female nude", 1920.
Watercolor on paper.
Signed and dated in the upper right corner.
Measurements: 18 x 23 cm; 32,5 x 37,5 cm (frame).

In this work Togores represents a female nude captured from life through a synthetic language, with energetic and well controlled strokes, which seeks above all to capture the volume and geometric play, while maintaining descriptive details that avoid the loss of realism. Both the colors, soft and bright, and the shapes, rounded, manage to recreate an atmosphere of dreaminess and intimacy.

Born into a wealthy and cultured family, who frequented intellectual circles, his interest in painting was born at the age of thirteen, when he lost his hearing due to meningitis. He traveled to France and Belgium, where he discovered the paintings of Rembrandt, and at the 1907 International Art Exhibition in Barcelona, he was fascinated by the work of Monet. At the age of eighteen he is already an important artist in Barcelona, and in 1913 he is commissioned to decorate the chapel of Anna Girona in Poblet. With a scholarship from the city council of Barcelona, he moved to Paris to study, where he became acquainted with the painting of Cézanne, who would be a decisive influence on his work from then on. In 1917 he meets Picasso, and comes into contact with cubist theories and circles. In the 1920s he began his relationship with the gallery owner Kahnweiler, who would later become Picasso's dealer. He worked exclusively with him between 1921 and 1931, when his painting went through its most experimental period, approaching automatism and surrealism. Under Kahnweiler's guidance he became an enormously successful artist. In 1932 his painting takes a new turn, a return to figuration. He moves to Barcelona and works with a new dealer, Francesc Cambó. During this period he painted many portraits of the most important people in Catalan society, and became one of the most sought-after painters of the time. During the Civil War he moved to France, but returned in 1939, where he continued to work, without having lost any of his prestige. His work is present in the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, the Museo Nacional del Arte de Cataluña, the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Museo de Arte de Sabadell, the Städtisches Gelsenkirchen Museum (Germany), the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), the Palacio Nacional de Montjuic and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), among others.