Antonio García Lamolla

ANTONIO GARCIA LAMOLLA (Barcelona, 1910-1981).
"A square in Zaragoza".
Watercolor.
Provenance: Pere García Lamolla (Brother); Private collection.
Work exhibited in the exhibition that the artist made in Zaragoza.
Measurements: 40 x 27,7 cm.

Painter born in Tarragona in 1910 and died in the French city of Dreux in 1981. When he was only a few years old he moved with his family from Tarragona to Lérida, where he developed the first steps of his artistic career. In 1939 the civil war took him into exile. From then until his death in 1981, he lived in Dreux, a town near Paris. Self-taught, his contacts in Lérida with the artists who gathered around the ART magazine, his friendship with Leandre Cristòfol and Josep Viola, and the poetry of Eluard, were shaping his path towards surrealism. From 1932 he joined the Adlan group and participated with them in various group exhibitions. His first works were landscapes, urban views and still lifes, ranging from a meticulous objectivism to a loose impressionism. His first surrealist works date from 1934, which he exhibited in Madrid in 1935. A year later he participated in Paris in the Exhibition of Spanish Art, in which Spanish artists established in Paris such as Picasso, Gris, Gargallo or Maruja Mallo were also present. Lamolla's surrealism is characterized by a special predilection for organicist forms and biomorphic masses, in which the imprint of Arp, whom he met through the magazine Art leridana, can be seen. Throughout his career he alternated surrealism with portraits, landscapes and still lifes.