Emilio Grau Sala

EMILIO GRAU SALA (Barcelona, 1911 - Paris, 1975).
"Gazon Ileun.
Watercolor on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Provenance: Odalys.
Measurements: 38 x 30 cm; 46 x 55 cm (frame).

Grau Sala applied to his landscapes a colorist lyricism inherited from French impressionism, as we can see in this poetic garden. This watercolor shows his taste for soft, enveloping and almost dreamlike atmospheres, where light and color merge in vibrant spots. The garden -with its loose lines, warm harmonies and intimate sensibility- is linked to the most poetic and decorative side of his work, close to Bonnard and Vuillard, but always filtered by his own Mediterranean temperament.

Emilio Grau Sala was trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, although his development was largely self-taught. After exhibiting for the first time in 1930, he moved to Paris during the Civil War, where he won the Carnegie Prize and consolidated a figurative and luminous style, influenced by impressionism and fauvism. There he also developed graphic and scenographic work. He returned to Barcelona in 1963 and, faithful to his colorful and elegant language, continued to work there until his death. His work is preserved in important museums and has been revalued since the nineties as one of the most personal voices of Spanish impressionism.