Ramon Barnadas

RAMÓN BARNADAS FÁBREGAS (Olot, Girona, 1909 - Vic, Barcelona, 1981).
"El remat", Olot, 1956.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, titled and located on the back.
Measurements: 76 x 115 cm; 94 x 114 cm (frame).

Precocious painter, with ten years he enters the School of Fine Arts of Olot, and debuts individually in 1929, in the Layetanas Galleries of Barcelona. Only six years later he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in his hometown. He exhibited his work in Spain, Mexico and Switzerland, and won first prizes at the National Exhibition of Madrid and the International Exhibition of Palamós, the national landscape prize of the Estrada Foundation and the Ricardo Portabella prize. Barnadas, with his sketchy style, went beyond the lessons learned from realism and impressionism, becoming part of the evolutionary avant-garde of Catalonia at the time. This painter was able to mark his own landscape language, searching for and assuming new pictorial concepts. However, his work also encompasses the human figure, animal themes, still lifes, gypsy families and bathers, all captured with the same inimitable talent that can be seen in his landscapes. Throughout his career Barnadas showed his work in several exhibitions, among them those held in the Layetanas Galleries in 1927 and 1928, and in the Sala Barcino in 1933, 1924, 1935 and 1936, both in Barcelona. He was also awarded the first prize for watercolor in the IX Provincial Art Contest, organized by the Diputación de Gerona, for his work "Gallinas" (Hens). After his death his work continued to be shown to the public; in 2006 the cultural center Fontana d'Or in Girona hosted a retrospective exhibition dedicated to this author, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, and that same year another exhibition was dedicated to him, organized by the Caixa de Girona. Between December 2008 and January 2009 the gallery Les Voltes de Olot presented a selection of his works on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. He currently has two streets named after him, one in his native Olot and another in the city of Girona.