Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Roi", 1957.
Oil on cardboard mounted on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed, titled and dated on the reverse.
Label "Galerie Tamenaga" on the stretcher frame.
A certificate of authenticity issued by the Antoni Clavé Archives will be given to the buyer.
Literature: Pierre Seghers, "Clavé", Tudor Publishing Company, New York, 1972, p.83, no. 67.
Provenance: Edgard Acosta Collection, Los Angeles.
In generally good condition. Exhibits slight discoloration to the paint. Black masking tape has been placed around the edges of the canvas.
Dust from the tape, deteriorated, has adhered to the painted surface.
Measurements: 105 x 75 cm.

In Rey, Antoni Clavé displays one of the most characteristic facets of his plastic language: the combination of pictorial matter and expressive gesture to build an ambiguous image, halfway between the figure and the sign. The face in profile, outlined with a thick, synthetic black line, emerges from a dense surface on which red, blue and white pigments are superimposed, creating a powerful image that gives the work a strong physical presence. On the head of the character, a jagged crown-like shape can be distinguished, which alludes to the title and adds a symbolic and almost ironic tone.

Clavé does not seek to represent a specific king, but to evoke the idea of power and its contradictions. His "king" appears stripped of all pomp and majesty, reduced to a fragmentary mask where matter replaces identity. The rough texture and the hallmarks of light break with the tradition of the royal portrait and transform him into an archetypal and timeless figure, as human as he is grotesque. Thus, the artist poses a reflection on the fragility of power and the theatricality of authority.

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.