Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ I SANMARTÍ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, France, 2005).
"Poisson au Fond Rouge".1958-1959.
Oil on wood.
Signed.
This work is in the Antoni Clavé Archives with number 58 HPN 27.
Measurements: 73 x 100 cm.

"Poisson au Fond Rouge" is fully inscribed in the period of maturity of Antoni Clavé, when, already installed in Paris, he develops a pictorial language centered in the matter and the construction of the image. In these years, Clavé definitively abandoned descriptive figuration to work with recognizable forms - still lifes, animals or emblems - subjected to processes of fragmentation, superposition and wear and tear.

The work reflects his interest in rigid supports, such as wood, and in a dense, eroded painting, where gesture and texture replace narrative. The fish motif, recurrent at this stage, acts more as a symbolic structure than as a literal representation, integrated into a composition of strong chromatic hallmarks and spatial tensions.

This piece exemplifies Clavé's singular position in the context of European Informalism: a material and expressive painting that dialogues with abstraction without completely renouncing the presence of the object, placing the work at the core of his production at the end of the 1950s.

Antoni Clavé i Sanmartí was one of the most important Spanish artists of the 20th century. After training in Barcelona, he went into exile in France at the end of the Civil War, where he developed a brilliant international career as a painter, sculptor, engraver and set designer. His work evolved from an initial realism towards a personal language marked by matter, gesture and the symbolic reinterpretation of historical and mythological figures. He is represented in major international public collections, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, consolidating his position as a key figure in post-war European art.