Canals Studio

CANALS STUDIO (Barcelona, 70's).
"Birds with cherries".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 30,5 x 24,5 cm; 42 x 36,5 cm (frame).

Estudio Canals was an artistic collective that emerged in Barcelona in the 1970s, made up of a small group of painters who found in the classical masters their main source of inspiration. Their proposal consisted of transferring the teachings of the great pictorial tradition to contemporary language. Its most outstanding figure was Miguel Canals, a profound connoisseur of techniques and styles from different periods. Canals left an abundant production in which he reinterpreted references ranging from Renaissance and Baroque to Impressionism and beyond: evocations of Seurat's Bathers, Monet's water lilies, Pissarro's landscapes, Degas' dancers, English hunting scenes, Venetian caprices, Van Gogh's intense fields or Quattrocentist virgins. Thanks to his virtuosity and versatility, he managed to consolidate his name among collectors interested in art history. Far from mere copying, his intention was to establish a sort of dialogue with the original works. A master of ancient techniques, he sometimes applied to his paintings a patina that evoked the passage of time, not with the intention of deceiving, but -as he himself affirmed- so that future experts could clearly recognize them as contemporary creations.