Emilio Grau Sala

EMILIO GRAU SALA (Barcelona, 1911 - Paris, 1975).
"Les chevaux de Luxembourg". Paris, ca.1960's.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner. Signed and titled on the reverse.
On the back, a label mentions that the painting would be reproduced in the catalog "Peintres témoins de leurs temps" (1975).
Measurements: 50 x 50 cm; 65 x 65 cm (frame).

A boy and his mother contemplate the passage in circle of the horses of a carrousel, in the mythical amusement park of the Parisian garden of Luxembourg. The themes of festive life, such as circuses and funfairs, were treated by Grau Sala in a particularly endearing way. Magic and joie de vivre are combined in this painting with a certain nostalgic or melancholic bias, resulting in a bittersweet cocktail characteristic of Grau Sala's work. The fine line drawing that endows the figures with great elegance is combined with a palette in which the colors seem to struggle to free themselves from the objects that contain them, given their Fauvist intensity and variety of patterns. This is a painter who took decorativism to the highest artistic level.

Grau Sala was trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, an apprenticeship that he combined with an essentially self-taught training. In 1930 he held his first exhibition at the Badriñas gallery in Barcelona. When the Civil War broke out, he moved to Paris, and that same year, 1936, he won the first Carnegie Prize. In the twenty-five years that he remained in the French capital he was closely acquainted with the avant-garde, although he always opted for a colorist figuration, derived from impressionism and fauvism. In fact, he soon became known in Paris as a successor of the Impressionist spirit and values, directly related to Bonnard and Vuillard. The success of his style led Grau Sala to devote himself also to graphic work and scenography. The grace and finesse of his characters, the vivacity of the colors and the elegant atmosphere of the environments that he captured made him reap great success and recognition all over the world. He held several solo exhibitions, mainly in Barcelona and Paris, but also in cities such as New York, Toulouse, London and Los Angeles. In 1963 he returned to Barcelona, when the stagnant figuration of Franco's Spain began to be challenged by Oteiza, Chillida, Tàpies and the collective "El Paso". However, he remained faithful to his style, and until his death in 1975 he worked within his own personal line, centered on his favorite themes, female figures, interiors and landscapes, in a vaguely classical, nostalgic time setting of the nineteenth century. After his death, and for more than a decade, Grau Sala was overshadowed by the multiple novelties that were emerging in democratic Spain, but from the 1990s onwards, the new boom in mid-level collecting relaunched Grau Sala, as he was understood as an interpreter of Impressionism in a Spanish key. Works by Emilio Grau Sala are kept in the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art and the Óscar Domínguez Institute of Contemporary Art and Culture.