J. Fin

"J. FIN"; JOSÉ VILATÓ RUIZ (Barcelona, 1916 - Paris, 1969).
"Four characters", Paris.
Tempera on cardboard.
Signed and located in the upper right corner.
Measurements: 23,5 x 32 cm; 34 x 44 cm (frame).

Son of the neuropsychiatrist Juan Vilató and Lola Ruiz, Pablo Picasso's sister, he lived in an environment in which the artistic expression was something daily. He was initiated in art in the family home, in Barcelona, contemplating the masterpieces of the blue, neoclassical and almost "noucentista" Picasso. Until the early forties, Fin experimented with all the plastic experiences that came and went: surrealism, figurative abstraction, lyrical cubism, etc. In 1934 he resided in Mahón, Menorca, where he painted a series of works that he later exhibited in Barcelona. A good part of his early production was destroyed in a bombing in 1937. Mobilized, he fought in the war, and in 1939 he left for France. He returned the following year, when he became friends with Manolo Hugué. In 1943 he exhibited in Barcelona, in the Reig Galleries, with his brother Javier, A. Fabra and R. Rogent, in an exhibition that was considered the first artistic revulsive of the postwar period in Barcelona. With a grant from the French government, he settled in Paris in 1946. In the French capital, together with his brother, he frequented the Kahnweiler circle, with friends such as Matisse, Miró, Braque, Lam Leiris, Giacometti, Domínguez, Bores, Viñes, Eulard, Cocteau and, above all, his uncle Picasso. During these years, Fin's style drifted towards abstraction, and he participated in numerous salons and group exhibitions. He also held several solo exhibitions during the fifties and sixties, in Paris, Saint Raphael, Barcelona, Bern, Madrid and Mallorca. After an abstract parenthesis, Fin began a style marked by synthetic figuration, with well-defined contours. He also worked in sculpture and mural painting, the latter discipline in which his works for the church of Coscojuela de Sobrarbe (1944) and the CSF factory in Paris (1960) stand out. In 1971 a posthumous anthological exhibition was dedicated to him in Barcelona.