Antoni Clavé (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, 2005) - "Mannequins" - Oil on [...]

Antoni Clavé (Barcelona, 1913 - Saint Tropez, 2005) "Mannequins" Oil on canvas. Signed. Painted in 1950. On the back it is signed again and has labels from the Lehmans Gallery in London and from Uniarte Barcelona.170 x 220 cm. At the end of the forties, Clavé began to make scenery and costumes for prestigious ballet productions, such as Los Caprichos for Ballets des Champs-Elysées (Paris, 1946), Carmen for the Paris Roland Petit Ballet company (Paris, 1949), Ballabile for Sadler’s Welles Ballet (London, 1950). He also illustrated high quality books for bibliophiles such as: The Queen of Spades, by Pushkin, Carmen, by Prosper Mérimée in 1946; Candide by Voltaire in 1948; Gargantua by Rabelais in 1950. He also had successful exhibitions in Galerie Delpierre in Paris in 1946, at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London in 1947, at the Galerie Robert Martin in Oran in 1948, (the year in which he was also awarded the Hallmark prize in New York) in Malmö in 1949 and in Göteborg in 1950. And so we arrive at the date in which the important mannequins series began, in which Clavé goes deeper into a particular poetic dimension. This is helped by his palette, which, as Pierre Seghers and Pierre Cabanne say, is “loaded and coloured like a polychromatic stained glass window.” The face of the wooden, jointed mannequin, which he had in his workshop, is transformed in these paintings into that of a sweet and melancholy woman, with a lost, inaccessible look. Beyond the Picasso reference, it is a key painting which augurs the series of kings and warriors which brought the artist so much fame. Contemplating this painting makes us feel immersed in the painter´s workshop, in movement, as if in a ballet which attracts us and hooks us. The scene is presided over by an “almost queen” mannequin, on her throne, topped off by a magnificent hat as a crown. She looks at us directly, enigmatically and suggestively, we find ourselves in a whole world with still life arrangements, women painters absorbed in their work, fragments of mannequins which emerge from open drawers, lie on the floor or on the table etc. Clavé´s marvellous, crazy blues. What talent and what a great artist! The painting is, in our opinion, one of the greatest in the series. “Modiste aux mannequins”, a painting in the same format, also from 1950, is in the Salomon collection in Chicago. To conclude, in the words of the great Jean Cassou: “The most striking feature of his character is defined in Clavé in the year 1949. The incorporation of line and colour, working in perfect fusion, liberate the artist from all limiting and imposed discipline. With a maximum ambition for liberty, the stain becomes volume and transparency becomes contours suggesting spaces. His palette becomes kaleidoscopic and his shapes are syncopated, divided like clover leaves. He completes great compositions such as “Modiste au mannequins”, “Nature morte à la pasteque” etc.” The painting comes with a certificate from the Archives Antoni Clavé, numbered 50 HT 3, dated 13th July 1996. Bibliography: "Clavé" by Pierre Seghers, 1971. Number 357 in the catalogue. Provenance: Private collection Barcelona.