PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1977). "Woman... Lot 44

PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1977). "Woman with a Basket of Fruit", 1959. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Measurements: 73 x 60 cm; 100 x 86 cm (frame). The apparent absence of the main figure in this canvas continues the characteristic aesthetics of Pruna, a Catalan master whose paintings, intimate and enigmatic, are marked by great delicacy and sober distinction. The young woman gazes melancholically at a voluptuous basket with radiant fruit inside, a possible allegory of youth and the bright awakening of early life. A mainly self-taught artist, Pere Pruna completed his training at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. After beginning to exhibit in Barcelona when he was still very young, he travelled to Paris in 1920, where he was helped and guided by Picasso. In the French capital he held a successful one-man show at the Galerie Percier, and came into contact with intellectuals such as Cocteau, Drieu la Rochelle, Max Jacob and others, with whom he founded the magazine "Philosophie" in 1924. Serge Diaghilev, who visited one of his exhibitions, also asked him to create the sets and costumes for the ballet "Les matelots" in 1925. From then on, he also worked on other musical works, such as "La vie de Polichinele" (1934) and "Oriane" (1938), among others. In 1928 he won second prize in the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburg and later, on his return to Barcelona, he won other awards such as the "Montserrat seen by Catalan artists" competition (1931) and the Nonell Prize (1936). The latter was surrounded by controversy, because Pruna won it for his oil painting "El vi de Chios", for which he used a photograph published in a Parisian pornographic magazine as a model. In response to the uproar, Pruna withdrew the prize, but the jury upheld its decision. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pruna settled in Paris and continued his international exhibition activity, most notably the exhibition organised in London in 1937. At the same time he worked for Ridruejo's propaganda services, with works such as the poster commemorating the promulgation of the Labour Force, and Eugenio d'Ors, National Head of Fine Arts, introduced him to the Spanish representation at the Venice Biennale in 1938. After the war he combined easel painting exhibitions with mural painting, a genre in which his work in the Monastery of Montserrat was particularly celebrated. In 1965 he won the City of Barcelona Prize, and three years later he was appointed academician of the Far de Sant Cristòfor. His style, centred on a graceful, stylised female figure, is based on the clear delicacy of the pink and "neoclassical" Picasso, and reveals a certain parallelism with the Italian Novencento, being fully in keeping with the classicist trend that appeared in Western art after the first wave of avant-gardism and of which his friend Cocteau was the driving force. Pruna focused on portraiture and above all on the female figure, capturing images marked by great delicacy and sober distinction. His representations are characterised by a stylised and diaphanous line, and are in tune with the return to order following the rupture that Cubism represented in France, thus linking directly with the avant-garde. Pere Pruna is currently represented in the Museum of Montserrat, where there is a space bearing his name, the MACBA in Barcelona and the Maricel Museum in Sitges, among others.