Pere Pruna

PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904–1977).
“Facing the Sea,” 1969.
Mixed media (pastel and pencil) on paper.
Signed and dated by hand.
Measurements: 31.5 x 39 cm; 47 x 55.5 cm (frame).

Pere Pruna trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. After beginning to exhibit in Barcelona at a very young age, he traveled to Paris in 1921, where he received support and guidance from Picasso. In the French capital, he held a successful solo exhibition at the Galerie Percier and came into contact with intellectuals such as Cocteau, Drieu la Rochelle, Max Jacob, and others, with whom he founded the magazine “Philosophie” in 1924. Serge Diaghilev commissioned him to create the sets and costumes for the ballet “Les matelots” in 1925. From then on, he also worked on other musical productions. In 1928, he won second prize at the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburgh, and later, upon his return to Barcelona, he received other awards, such as the prize in the “Montserrat as Seen by Catalan Artists” competition (1931) and the Nonell Prize (1936). The latter prize was mired in controversy because Pruna won it for his oil painting “El vi de Chios,” for which he used a photograph published in a Parisian pornographic magazine as a model. Faced with the uproar this caused, Pruna renounced the prize, but the jury upheld its decision. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pruna settled in Paris and continued his international exhibition activity, notably with an exhibition organized in London in 1937. His style, centered on a graceful and stylized female figure, draws on the clear delicacy of Picasso’s “Rose Period” and “Neoclassical” phases, and reveals certain parallels with the Italian Novecento movement. Pere Pruna’s works are represented in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MNAC, and the Montserrat Museum, as well as in major public and private collections.