Antoni Clavé

ANTONI CLAVÉ (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint-Tropez, France, 2005).
"Child's head", 1949.
Oil on paper glued to board.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 61 × 35 cm.; 84 × 58 cm. with frame.

In "Cabeza de niño", Clavé starts from the traditional motif of the child portrait to subvert it in a radical way. The image does not seek sweetness or idealization, but transforms the child's face into a disturbing, fragmented and deeply expressive presence. Between blues, blacks and grays, the head emerges as an eroded mask, crossed by fillings, dark strokes and areas of matter that intensify its psychological charge.

The work belongs to a particularly relevant moment in Clavé's evolution, when his language begins to abandon the more narrative figuration to enter into freer, more material and dramatic solutions. The childish features are barely recognizable -eyes, mouth, oval face-, but they are subjected to a plastic tension that anticipates the later importance of the mask, the trace and the matter in his production.

The cold, dark palette gives the portrait an introspective and almost spectral atmosphere. More than a portrait, the work functions as an interiorized image, where the figure is transformed into an emotional sign. Because of its early date, its expressive force and its relation to the transition towards the more material Clavé, it is a piece of special interest in his career.

Antoni Clavé studied at the San Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and began his career linked to graphic design, illustration and decorative arts. After the Civil War he went into exile in France and settled in Paris, where he came into contact with artists such as Vuillard, Bonnard and Picasso. His international recognition was consolidated in the fifties, a period in which he also developed an outstanding work as a set designer for theater, ballet and cinema.

From 1954 onwards he devoted himself fully to painting, evolving towards a more and more material, symbolic and informalist language. He was awarded prizes at the Venice Biennial in 1954 and at the International Biennial in Tokyo in 1957, and in 1984 the Spanish government dedicated a large exhibition to him in the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennial. His work is represented in institutions such as the Reina Sofia Museum, the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.