Xavier Pousa

XAVIER POUSA (Goián, Pontevedra, 1931 – Vigo, 2000).
“Vase with Mimosas.”
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 46 x 38 cm; 62 x 53 cm (frame).

Orphaned by his father at a very young age, Xavier Pousa was raised by his mother and his grandfather, Serafín Carrera, who, when the boy was 13 years old, urged him to show his drawings to the painter Antonio Fernández. Fernández took him on as a student, and Pousa inherited from him a love of nature and a rigorous approach to his work. In 1948, he traveled to Madrid for the first time, where he discovered not only the immense artistic treasures of the Prado Museum but also those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Casa Sorolla, and El Greco’s paintings in Toledo. Thanks to various scholarships, he was able to study in Madrid, enrolling in open drawing classes at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the Museo de Reproducciones Artísticas. In 1951, he enrolled at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, and beginning the following year, he launched his career as an exhibiting artist. In the mid-1950s, he traveled through France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, where he was deeply impressed by Van Gogh’s work. By the 1960s, he had settled in Ourense, where he became a member of the group “Os Artistiñas.” Despite living in Galicia and participating in numerous exhibitions and competitions there, the artist maintained ties to Madrid, where he resided during certain periods of his life and where he exhibited at various galleries, such as Toisón and Macarrón. He was also a notably nomadic figure, traveling constantly throughout Europe and the Americas. In 1996, he was named a member of the Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts. Landscape was always his passion; in fact, he was a co-founder of the Mondariz-Balneario Foundation, serving as vice president on its board of trustees and directing the foundation’s Landscape Scholarship program.