Joaquim Mir

JOAQUIM MIR TRINXET (Barcelona, 1873 - 1940).
"Rural view".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 39,5 x 64 cm; 53,5 x 78 cm (frame).

Joaquín Mir studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Jordi of Barcelona and in the workshop of the painter Luis Graner. His style was also influenced by the School of Olot, his father's hometown. In 1893 he formed the "Colla del Safrà" together with artists such as Isidro Nonell, Ricard Canals and Ramón Pichot, and in the last years of the century he was associated with the artistic environment of "Els Quatre Gats". He completed his training in 1895, when he spent a season in Madrid copying works by Velázquez. During these years he took part in the Fine Arts Exhibitions in Barcelona in 1894, 1896 and 1898. Winner of a second medal at the Madrid Exhibition of 1899, that same year he moved to the capital in order to compete for a scholarship in Rome. When he was unsuccessful, he went with Santiago Rusiñol to Mallorca, on a trip that would be a definitive turning point in his career. Mir was dazzled by the Mallorcan landscape, specifically by the landscape of Sa Calobra, which was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him. In 1901 he exhibited the fruit of this first Mallorcan period in Barcelona's Sala Parés, and again won a second medal at the National Exhibition. After a period of illness that forced him to move to Reus, in 1907 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Already consolidated as an outstanding figure of the Catalan panorama, he acquires the definitive recognition at national level in 1917, when he is awarded the National Prize of Fine Arts. Four years later he married and settled permanently in Vilanova i la Geltrú. His successes followed one after the other, and in 1929 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition in Barcelona. The following year he won the medal of honor at the National Exhibition in Madrid, an award he had been pursuing since 1922. Although he was mainly a native painter, he had solo and group exhibitions in Washington, Paris, Pittsburg, New York, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Venice. Mir is today considered the most outstanding representative of Spanish post-impressionist landscape painting. His work is preserved in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Prado Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among many others.