Josep Maria Llopis i de Casades

JOSEP MARIA LLOPIS I DE CASADES (Sitges, 1886 -Barcelona, 1915).
"Side altar of the parish church of Sitges".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 84 x 63 cm; 98 x 76 cm (frame).

Historical document of how the interior of the parish church of Sitges was before the Spanish Civil War, when this altar was destroyed.

Josep Maria Llopis i de Casades was a Catalan painter. He was the son of the lawyer Manuel Llopis i Bofill and Josepa de Casades i Dòria (1860-1909), and brother of the diplomat Manuel Llopis i de Casades. Trained at the Llotja school, where he was a disciple of Fèlix Mestres i Borrell, he participated in the international art exhibitions of Barcelona in 1907 and 1911. In the last of these, he was awarded a medal for his painting Altar de la iglesia de Sant Sever. He also exhibited twice at the Faianç Català (1911 and 1913) and won one of the first prizes at the Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid in 1912. In addition, three of his paintings were reproduced in the magazine Museum (curiously, in the same issue in which Joan Maragall's well-known article on Joaquim Sunyer was published). Despite his short artistic career, from the thematic point of view, he underwent a remarkable progression, since he began representing military matters and soon evolved towards gardens and interiors of temples, which he knew how to capture with vivid colors and profusion of details. Among all his works, the most outstanding are La Sala Capitular de la Seo de Barcelona and El órgano de la iglesia parroquial de Sitges (The Organ of the Parish Church of Sitges). Ill with typhus, he died in Barcelona on January 28, 1915, at the age of 28, when everyone was predicting a promising future for him as a painter. In April 1916 a posthumous exhibition was organized at the Galerías Laietanes in Barcelona. Of the forty-eight works that could be seen, seventeen were related to Sitges (the money raised was destined to the construction of the Sagrada Familia temple).