Ivo Pascual

IVO PASCUAL RODÉS (Vilanova i la Geltrú, Barcelona, 1883 - Riudarenes, Girona, 1949).
"Gray day", San Esteban de Bas, autumn 1941.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, titled and located on the back.
Measurements: 46 x 55 cm; 67 x 77 cm (frame).

Ivo Pascual was a Catalan landscape painter. A disciple of Joan Llimona at the Círculo Artístico de San Lucas, he specialized in landscape painting and stood out for his bucolic and traditional representations. In a first stage, his painting is of an intense chromatism, which evolves towards an approach to nature. He collaborated with Antoni Gaudí in the mural paintings of the lobby of La Pedrera and participated in the restoration of the cathedral of Mallorca. He also designed the stained glass windows of the Monastery of Montserrat. In 1914 he replaced the director Josep Berga i Boix at the Escola de Belles Arts de Olot. Educated at the academy of Joan Llimona, he was soon seduced by the warm and renewing breeze of the French school of Barbizon and the artist Corot. Within a copious production, bucolic and picturesque landscapes predominate, evoking to the spectator a positivized rural life in Catalan lands. Under a natural and objective conception, a technique that requires rich chromatisms and some avant-garde features coming from the neoimpressionist pointillism, he exquisitely represents a series of customs and anecdotal events of the country's culture. He was one of the most outstanding representatives of the Olot school of landscape painters. Ivo Pascual's work is preserved in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the National Art Museum of Catalonia, as well as in the Vila Casas Foundation.