Tarrassó

CASIMIRO MARTÍNEZ TARRASSÓ (Sarrià, Barcelona, 1898 - Barcelona, 1980).
"Plaça de Madremanya, Girona" 1966.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower corner. Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 81 x 100 cm; 100 x 119 cm (frame).

In this piece, Tarrassó does not limit himself to portraying the square of Madremanya; he vindicates it through emotion. The work is a vibrant testimony of how the artist assimilated the freedom of Fauvism, where color ceases to be a slave of reality to become the absolute protagonist of the visual experience. Through an energetic and profoundly material brushstroke, traditional Catalan architecture is stripped of its rigidity to become a choreography of planes that seem to pulsate under a light of their own. The walls are defined not by stone, but by a bold palette of fiery ochers and electric violets that emerge from the shadows, building space through contrast and stain rather than line.

This interpretation moves away from topographical description into expressionist terrain, where the deliberate distortions of perspective and the sinuosity of the arches endow the environment with an organic and almost human dimension. The composition, typical of his maturity in the sixties, articulates a dynamic play of volumes where depth is suggested through a superposition of vibrant planes and tactile textures. In short, Tarrassó achieves in this work a masterful synthesis between the robustness of the Empordà landscape and the modernity of the European avant-garde, turning an everyday corner into a surface of pure chromatic intensity and formal freedom.

Known simply as Tarrassó, he trained at the Escuela de La Lonja in Barcelona. Throughout his career Tarrassó was distinguished with the Pollença Prize of the I International Painting Contest in 1962; the Santiago Rusiñol Prize in 1972; and the medals obtained in various editions of the Salones de Otoño de Palma de Mallorca: first prize in 1967 and 1973, and honorary prize in 1970. His work is currently preserved in various national and international private collections, as well as in the Museum and Artistic Fund of Porreras (Mallorca) and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palma.