Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"En noir et bleu", 1972.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower margin. Signed, titled and dated on the back.
With label on the back of the Gaspar room, Barcelona.
Measurements: 97 x 130 cm; 113 x 146 cm (frame).

"En noir et bleu" immerses us in a deeply suggestive abstraction, where the material, the gestural and the almost objectual coexist within the same surface. The work shows Clavé's ability to articulate balance between order and chaos, between the forcefulness of black, the depth of blue and the unexpected delicacy of lace or white cloth, thus consolidating one of the most characteristic features of his pictorial language in the seventies.

The painting presents a cobalt blue background, intense but far from being uniform: the surface shows tonal variations, glazes, denser areas and other more diluted, creating a vibrant atmosphere. On this chromatic field float black dots and strokes of ink or dark brushstrokes that unfold like free arabesques, almost anarchic, typical of the spontaneous gesture that characterizes the artist at this time. These black signs provide a graphic dimension close to informal calligraphy, generating rhythm and tension within the composition.

Within the predominance of deep blues and blacks, Clavé introduces two minimal but decisive chromatic accents: a green and a red dot. They are small color irruptions that function as visual counterpoints, intensifying the emotional complexity of the work.

In the lower part, a white stripe is distinguished, evoking a lace or a delicate tablecloth, a recurring motif in the artist's iconographic universe, heir to his interest in textile textures and elements of domestic appearance transformed into plastic signs.

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 already enjoyed great international prestige at the time when he began to be recognized in Spain, after his exhibition at the Gaspar Gallery in Barcelona in 1956. At the same time, he made illustrations for the work "Gargantua and Pantagruel", which led him to become familiar with medieval iconography. He received awards 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.