Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Preparatory drawing for Bleu, Gris et Noir", 1965.
Ink on paper and collage on paper.
Work intervened on both sides.
Signed on both sides.
Measurements: 64 x 49 cm; 67 x 52 cm (frame).
The very title Bleu, Gris et Noir, already anticipates the artist's approach: a deliberate reduction of the chromatic palette to enhance the expressive value of contrast and texture. In this type of work, Clavé does not seek to represent recognizable figures in the traditional sense, but rather to construct surfaces where the trace of gesture and the superimposed layers acquire prominence. This restricted use of color is related to his interest in lyrical abstraction and the poetics of the fragment, where the remains of forms, signs or graphics suggest rather than describe. In 1965, Clavé was consolidating his definitive step towards languages increasingly closer to abstraction, progressively moving away from the more recognizable figuration of previous stages. His work focused on experimentation with pictorial matter, collage, the trace of gesture and formal reduction, elements that would become constants in his later production.
Antoni Clavé is one of the most relevant figures of Spanish contemporary art. Trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Jordi in Barcelona, Clavé was initially dedicated to advertising graphics, illustration and decorative arts. In 1936 he took an active part in the Civil War, in the Republican ranks, which led him to go into exile in France at the end of the war. That same year, 1939, he exhibits the drawings he made on the battlefields. He settled in Paris, where he met Vuillard, Bonnard and Picasso. He already enjoyed great international prestige at the time when he began to be recognized in Spain, after his exhibition at the Gaspar Gallery in Barcelona in 1956. At the same time, he made illustrations for the work "Gargantua and Pantagruel", which led him to become familiar with medieval iconography. He received awards at the Hallimark in New York in 1948, at the Venice Biennial in 1954 and at the International Biennial in Tokyo in 1957. In 1984 the Spanish State recognized his artistic value with the exhibition of more than one hundred of his works in the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. That same year he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Clavé's work can be found, among many others, in the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.