Clavé, Antoni.
Works of the artist.
Painter, draftsman, engraver, stage designer and sculptor who was born in Barcelona in 1913 and died in Saint Tropez in 2005. He estudied at the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona with Fèlix Mestres and he was disciple of Angel Ferrant and Josep Mongrell. [+]
Clavé, Antoni
Painter, draftsman, engraver, stage designer and sculptor who was born in Barcelona in 1913 and died in Saint Tropez in 2005.
He estudied at the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona with Fèlix Mestres and he was disciple of Angel Ferrant and Josep Mongrell.
His first professional works were related to the illustration and advertising posters.
Around 1934 he started to experiment with new materials and collage procedures, that he resumed when the Civil War was ended and after being released from a concentration camp in the south of France.
Refugee in Perpignan, thanks to the help of the painter from Rousillon Martin Vivès, he held and exhibition with drawings and gouaches before leaving for Paris.
Stablished in the city of the Seine, he began to present his artworks in the Autumn Salons (1940-1948) and to publish illustrations and lithographs.
In 1944 he met Picasso and two years later he debuted as a stage designer in the ballet Los Caprichos. After that he developed an intense activity producing costumes and decorations for theatral pieces, operes and ballets (Carmen, La Casa de Bernarda Alba..), at the same time that his plastic production started to trascend the limits of the parisian culture.
In 1948 he was awarded with the Hallmark prize in New York. Since then there had been constant exhibitions of the catalan painter in Oran, New York, Sweden, London, Rome, Chicago, Venice, Sao Paulo, Milano, Zurich, Tokyo, Madrid, etc; In Barcelona it was Sala Gaspar that organized in 1956 the first of his solo exhibitions in the city where he was born.
A year earlier Clavé had made the last decorations for the Roland Petit ballet (Le Peux), at the same time that he reprising the collage.
In 1960 he included some new procedures as paint on tapestry, lead sculptures, reliefs and assemblages (compositions with fragments of cloth or tapestry).
His works and bas-reliefs in lead, such as the mysterious and quadrangular warriors and kings, started to appear in his paintings from the illustrations for Gargantua by Rabelais, that he made in 1950, demonstrate the usefulness of the soft and malleable metal such us lead to obtain textures and qualities of extraordinary expressive force.
During the 70s persisted the Clave’s desire for technical renewal and he inaugurated his serie of assemblies with strings and woods (Instruments) and his serie of crumpled packaging papers.
The 80s were important by the great recognition of Clavé in his native country through the different exhbitions organized in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza and Alicante, among others; In addition he participate in the Venice Biennal pavilion with 125 of his artworks. At the same time, he created a mural at the Barajas airport and he made a serie of artwork in tribute to Pablo Picasso (A Don Pablo). Clave’s International exhibitions continued: New York, Habana, Tokyo, Osaka, Paris, Arles, Nice...
During the 90’s Clavé continued working and exhibiting around the world. Also in that period the great retrospectives of the painter began.
