Antoni Clavé i Sanmartí

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Roi", c. 1959.
Oil on Marouflé paper on canvas.
Attached certificate issued by the Clavé Archives and signed by Natalie Clavé, January 2019 in Paris. Registration number 59HPMT62.
Presents on the back label of the Taménaga Gallery (Paris).
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 81 x 64.5 cm; 92 x 72 cm (frame).

In this work Clavé explores the figure of the king as a universal archetype, stripped of solemnity and covered with an ambiguous aura that oscillates between the majestic and the grotesque. The painting, of marked material expressiveness, combines dense textures, earthy shades and hallmarks of light that intensify the dramatic charge of the composition. Clavé's "Roi" is not a classical portrait, but a symbolic deconstruction: power appears humanized, vulnerable and almost playful, in tune with the post-war European interest in questioning the traditional symbols of authority.
In comparison with other artists of his time, the work dialogues with the experiments of Jean Dubuffet and art brut, as well as with the European informalism of Antoni Tàpies, who shared the search for a pictorial language that prioritized matter, gesture and expression over academic representation. Clavé developed his own imaginary in which the figure of the king becomes a kind of archetypal mask, a deformed mirror of the human condition.
This theme was fundamental in his career: the series of kings, queens and warriors allowed Clavé to delve into the theater of power and collective memory, creating a repertoire of characters that, more than portraits, are totemic presences.
Antoni Clavé is one of the most relevant figures of Spanish contemporary art. Trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Jordi in Barcelona, Clavé was initially dedicated 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 was awarded prizes 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.