Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Casanova, the gallant adventurer", 1934.
Mixed media on marbled paper.
Original for the poster of the film premiered at the Capitol Cinema in 1934.
Slight damage in the lateral margins.
Measurements: 220 x 104 cm; 240 x 122,5 cm (frame).

Antoni Clavé was, along with Josep Renau, one of the most famous artists in the genre of Spanish film poster design of the twentieth century. At only 22 years of age, the Catalan held the title of "the most genuine exponent of Barcelona poster art", and was also considered by the German magazine Gebrauchsgraphik as "the most popular poster artist in the Catalan capital". Years before the creation of the present work, between 1931 and 1933, Antoni Clavé had already received numerous awards for his contribution to the world of cinema. Among other creations, his brilliant posters and oil paintings on plywood were displayed on the façades of the main cinemas in Barcelona, such as the Capitol Cinema and the Catalonia. Specifically, Clavé made the poster in question to decorate the walls of the Capitol cinema, following the premiere of the film "Casanova, the gallant adventurer" in 1934 (starring Ivan Mosjoukine).

Antoni Clavé is one of the most relevant figures of Spanish contemporary art. Trained at the School of Fine Arts of San Jordi in Barcelona, Clavé is dedicated in a first period 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. In this same decade of the fifties is when he began his intense work in the world of ballet and theater, achieving great fame in the world of international scenography. In 1952 he made the sets for the film "Hans Christian Andersen", by Charles Vidor, and was nominated for an Oscar award. In 1954, he abandoned set design to devote himself to painting. 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.