Josep Mestres Cabanes

JOSEP MESTRES CABANES (Manresa, Barcelona, 1898-1990).
"In the stable", 1947.
Oil on panel.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 20 x 14 cm; 37 x 30,5 cm (frame).

Scenographer, painter and draftsman. He began in the School of Arts and Crafts of Manresa. After graduating he was awarded a gold medal by the Chamber of Commerce. Already in Barcelona, he entered the School of Fine Arts while practicing in the scenographic workshops of Salvador Alarma, with whom he would become a partner. In 1924, he decorated the Pedralbes Palace. In 1932 he held his first exhibition in Ripoll, and since then he has exhibited in Barcelona and Madrid. In the National of 1949 he obtained a silver medal. He was commissioned to paint the sets of numerous Wagnerian operas for the Liceo in Barcelona; he was also entrusted with the pictorial reconstruction of the rest room. He painted the interiors of the Castilian cathedrals of León and Burgos. The work on this cathedral by Martín Garrido (1952) publishes the reproduction of twelve pictures of the interior painted by Mestres. During this period he exhibited at the Salón de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He was a professor of perspective at the Institut del Teatre. He is considered the last great representative of anecdotal realism. In him coincided the apparently irreconcilable binomial between realistic space and poetic space.