FRANCESC GIMENO I ARASA (Tortosa, Tarragona, 1858... Lot 42

FRANCESC GIMENO I ARASA (Tortosa, Tarragona, 1858 - Barcelona, 1927). "Still life". Oil on canvas. It has restorations on the pictorial surface. It has faults in the frame. Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 34 x 48 cm; 55 x 69 cm (frame). In this work the author offers us a still life captured from a low point of view, unusual in the genre since the painters usually choose precisely the opposite in order to allow a detailed view of the elements that make up the still life. Here, however, the objects are small: fish and garlic heads, while the larger object is in the background, so that the composition is perfectly clear without the need to raise the viewer's position. A painter and draughtsman, Francesc Gimeno began his training in Tortosa at the age of fourteen. In 1880 he settled in Barcelona and alternated his work as a painter-decorator with that of an academy he set up with several friends. In 1884 he travelled to Madrid and entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, where he was a pupil of Carlos de Haes. At the Prado Museum he admired the great masters of the 17th century, especially Velázquez. On his return to Barcelona in 1889, he suddenly rejected the contracts offered to him and returned to decorative painting. This decision may have been due to his intention to dispense with any kind of patronage other than public recognition. He remained away from the artistic scene for twenty-five years, but did not stop painting and drawing in his spare time, and some of his best works date from this period. He did, however, take part in a few exhibitions, winning prizes such as honorary diplomas at the Barcelona exhibition of 1894 and the Madrid National Exhibition of 1904. In 1915, at the insistence of Dalmau, Mallol and Jori, he organised his first individual exhibition at the gallery that Dalmau, Mallol and Jori ran in Barcelona. Francesc Gimeno is represented in the Prado Museum, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Art Museum of Catalonia and the J. Sala collection.