Ferran Arasa

FERRAN ARASA SUBIRATS (Tortosa, 1905- 1992).
"River view".
Oil on táblex.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 89 x 116 cm; 110,5 x 137,5 cm (frame).

He began his studies at the Academy of Drawing of Ricard Cerveto. Later he was a disciple of Agustin Baiges. The first medal obtained in the Masriera Competition in Barcelona in 1932 was very important to give him the definitive impulse to his career as a painter. In 1935 he held his first exhibition at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona. In 1936 he went to Mallorca, where he spent the years of the Civil War. The landscapes of the island and those of Tortosa are the two main sources of his pictorial production. In particular, his work is closely linked to the Ebro River as it passes through his city. Considered the most important painter of his generation in the Ebro Lands, in 1945 he was awarded the Tapiró Medal of Tarragona, in 1949 the Gimeno Medal of Tortosa, an award he would win again on other occasions. In these years, the painter had already found his personal language that would define his work in the fifties and sixties. It was a period in which he alternated his residence between Tortosa and Pollensa (Mallorca). His exhibitions were held in Barcelona, where his work received good reviews, as well as in his hometown, where, on the contrary, his work was not very well accepted. The greatest recognition of his work was the tribute exhibition at the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc in Barcelona in 1984, a tribute that continued with the decoration of the Cross of Sant Jordi in 1986. A painter of expressionist influence, he created a work initially close to Van Gogh and later related to Kokoscha and particularly to Soutine. His production focused specifically on landscape is characterized by free and spontaneous interpretation, by the abundance of matter, by the use of a constructive brushstroke and by a great mastery of color. More than as an end, he used the landscape as a means for the expression of his own feelings, of his inner life.