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Lithograph, copy 59/75.
Signed and justified by hand.
Published book Antoni Key Graphics Works. Reproduced on the whole page.
The lithograph will be sent with the catalog raisonné.
Antoni Clavé is one of the most relevant figures of contemporary Spanish art. Trained at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Clavé devoted his first period to advertising graphics, illustration and decorative arts. In 1936 he took an active part in the Civil War, in the Republican ranks, which led him to go into exile in France at the end of the war. This same year, 1939, he exhibited the drawings he made on the battlefields. He settled in Paris, where he met Vuillard, Bonnard and Picasso. From this time, Clavé began to develop a work marked by a different plastic, less classical. During this period his figures gradually lost precision and shape, giving way to lines and a personal range of colors and textures that have been the protagonists of his works ever since. It already enjoyed great international prestige at the time its recognition began in Spain, from its exhibition in the Gaspar room in Barcelona, in 1956. In 1952 he made the sets for the film "Hans Christian Andersen", by Charles Vidor, and obtains an Oscar nomination. In 1954 he abandoned decoration to dedicate himself to painting. In the 1960s he paid homage to El Greco, and his painting from this moment reveals the influences received from that master, as well as from the Baroque painters. The theme of the gentleman with his hand on his chest takes on special relevance, a reference that will be repeated in future works by Clavé. This period is characterized by the definitive step towards abstraction. In the seventies the evolution in Clavé's work continued, using various techniques such as collage, and inventing new ones such as “papier froissé”, the result of a coincidence in the use of aerosol spray on crumpled paper. In 1978, the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, now the Georges Pompidou Center, dedicated a retrospective to him that made him one of the most prestigious artists of his generation. In the 1980s, he dedicated a series of works to Picasso, under the title “To don Pablo”. His latest works are characterized by the recreation of textures within abstraction, with profuse use of "froissé papier". He was awarded at the Hallimark in New York in 1948, at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and at the Tokyo International Biennale in 1957. In 1984 the Spanish State recognized his artistic worth with the exhibition of more than one hundred of his works in the pavilion Spanish at the Venice Biennale. That same year he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Clavé's work can be found, among many others, in the Museums of Fine Arts in Bilbao, the Tate Gallery, Modern Art in Paris and Tokyo, the British Museum and the Reina Sofía in Madrid. 67534291
