Skip to main content

Josep de Togores Biography

Josep de Togores

(Josep de Togores i Llach; Cerdanyola, 1893-Barcelona, ​​1970) Spanish painter.After a first realistic stage, with a predominance of the nude, he drifted towards a style with a religious theme.He also worked on mural painting and book illustration.

Born into a wealthy family and with intellectual and artistic concerns, he soon revealed a great sensitivity for drawing.At thirteen years of age, he became deaf due to meningitis.In those years he was a drawing student of Joan Llaverias, who advised the father to let his son's artistic potential develop to the maximum.In 1906, father and son traveled to Paris and then to Belgium in the hope of curing the boy's deafness.

A year later, stimulated by the impression made on him by the Monet painting he saw at the International Exhibition in Barcelona, ​​Josep de Togores began to paint his first oil paintings.After a period of apprenticeship with Félix Mestres in Barcelona, ​​he painted some worthy paintings, the best known of which is El loco de Cerdanyola (1909), shown in the Parés room in Barcelona before it was awarded at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels (Belgium) and acquired by the Belgian Government.

Portrait of Madame Claire (1922), by Josep de Togores

With this work he opened what has been considered his impressionist stage.In 1911 he won a third medal at the Barcelona Fine Arts Exhibition.Two years later, encouraged by his family, he went to Madrid for a few months to immerse himself in the painting of the Prado Museum, and that same year he returned to Paris with a grant from the Barcelona City Council.In the French capital he discovered painters who were to be decisive in the directions of aesthetic taste, mainly Cézanne and Matisse, from whom he drew fundamental lessons of classicism.With the outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918), Togores decided to leave Paris and return to Barcelona.

It was then when, in contact with some representatives of the Catalan pictorial Noucentisme (Sunyer, Nogués, Casanovas or JM Junoy) and with the lesson learned in France, he began to abandon the impressionist procedures to pay more attention to the line, volume and materiality of objects.Once the drama of the death of his mother (1915) and the bankruptcy of the family fortune had been overcome, the art of Josep de Togores began to give its best.

In 1919 he settled again in the city of the Seine, this time for eleven years.There he frequented Picasso, Gris, Utrillo, Modigliani and other artists, although he remained in a precarious situation until he got a contract with the gallery owner Kahnweiler, thanks to which he exhibited successfully in various European capitals.In the catalog of his first solo exhibition (1922), Max Jacob spoke of "cubistic vigor", "linear composition", "constructive analyst", etc., characteristics that related his art to the new German objectivity and to the current Italian valori plastici .

Sleeping children (1927), by Josep de Togores

Some excellent paintings from the 1920s are the portrait by Aleix de Togores , Two nudes and Bathers , as well as numerous exceptionally crafted female nudes, in whose formal sense classical Picassian academicism is mixed and the close carnal vitality of the best Sunyer.In 1926 he held a triumphant exhibition in Barcelona, ​​but the city's official museums still considered his art too scandalous.Between 1928 and 1930 his work changed: bodies were derealized and transformed into almost abstract figures, which gradually drifted towards a kind of anthropomorphic calligraphy close to the aesthetics of French automatic surrealism.

After a few years of practicing this type of surrealism, quite strange in Spain, Togores returned to classicism and a conventional figuration, a bit standardized, but almost always of excellent technical invoice.In his last creative stage, he became interested in religious themes, encouraged by his activities as a restorer of ancient altarpieces.His graphic work destined for bibliophile editions is also of great interest.Since the mid-1940s he presented his works at the Sala Parés and also in galleries and museums in Madrid.It is represented, among others, in the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (Madrid) and in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gustave Moreau Biography

Gustave Moreau (Paris, 1826-id., 1898) French painter.In 1857 he made a trip to Italy that allowed him to learn about the work of classics such as Michelangelo Buonarroti or Andrea Mantegna, and obtained critical recognition at the 1864 Salon, with Oedipus and the Sphinx .His period of maturity began in 1870.His work shows a clear preference for historical, biblical and mythological themes, always developed in a disturbing and evocative way, through the recreation of exotic, often oriental atmospheres, and drama of the scenes.Its particular sense of color also stands out, especially striking for its golden sheen.Among his paintings, it is worth highlighting, among others, The Apparition (1876), Chimera (1884) and Jupiter and Semele (1896).Belonging to the symbolist current, Moreau inspired future surrealist artists, especially André Breton, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.His work is exhibited in his Parisian mansion, which in 1902 became the Gustave Moreau Museum. Gustave More...
Post a Comment
Read more

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).
Post a Comment
Read more

Johann neander Biography

Johann Neander (Göttingen, 1789-Berlin, 1850) German theologian.A Jew by birth, he converted to Protestantism.He was professor of ecclesiastical history in Heidelberg (1811) and in Berlin (1813).His main work is Universal History of Religion and the Christian Church (1824-1852), which covers up to the s.XV.
Post a Comment
Read more

Francisco Javier Elío Biography

Francisco Javier Elío (Pamplona, ​​1767-Valencia, 1822) Spanish military.A veteran of the North African and Roussillon campaigns, he faced, as governor, the outbreaks of revolution that occurred in the Río de la Plata. Francisco Javier Elío Admonished by the Cortes when he returned to Spain in 1812, his rejection of the constitutional system was accentuated, and in 1814 he was favorable to Fernando VII, to whom he offered his support from his position as captain general of Valencia to restore absolute power.Thus, between 1814 and 1820 he was one of the fundamental pillars of absolutism, and a zealous persecutor of liberals, whom he fought harshly. When the revolution of 1820 occurred, he was imprisoned by the Duke of Almodóvar to prevent the people from executing him; but, suspected of leading a riot from prison, he was sentenced to die with a vile stick.The name of General Elío was rehabilitated by King Fernando VII himself by granting his son Don Bernardo Elío, Leizaur and O...
Post a Comment
Read more

Michelangelo's David

Anyone who has traveled to Florence will agree with me that it is a special city, where art arises in any corner or in any corner, a city created to be admired.There is a street that well It could go unnoticed, a cobbled street over Florence, a street that hides one of the most beautiful treasures of the Renaissance.A sculpture that from the bottom of the Galleria dell 'Accademia, stares at everyone who I approached to contemplate that imposing figure. The David of MiguelAngel , let us know its characteristics, its history, and also some curiosity about this sculpture of colossal size. The David of MiguelAngel | Historic Moment When Cosme de Medici managed to become Signore in 1434 of the city of Florence, the power of a banker dynasty began> who directed the designs of Florence during practically the entire Renaissance.Sixty years of a dynasty that brought four signori to the city government, until in 1494 the last sign Pedro de Medici surrendered to the brillia...
Post a Comment
Read more

Isamu noguchi Biography

Isamu Noguchi (Los Angeles, 1904-New York, 1988) American sculptor and designer whose works are representative of the expressive power of organic abstract works developed by 20th century American sculpture. Isamu Noguchi Son of the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi, his training was broad and cosmopolitan.He studied at Columbia University and, after residing for a few years in Japan, he moved to New York, where he continued his training with Onorio Ruotolo.During 1923 he traveled through England, China and Mexico, and later moved to Paris, where he was Constantin Brancusi's assistant for two years, between 1927 and 1928.There he met and related to sculptors such as Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder and developed a enthusiastic abstract sculpture.It was also influenced by surrealism and the work of Picasso and Joan Miró. His first exhibition was held in 1929 in New York.In 1938 he won the national competition to decorate the Associated Press pavilion at New York's Rockef...
Post a Comment
Read more

José Pella and Forgas Biography

José Pella y Forgas (Bagur, 1852-Barcelona, ​​1918) Spanish historian and politician.A militant of conservative regionalism, he was one of the founders of the Jove Catalunya group (1869) and participated in the writing of the Memorial de greuges .He is the author of The Catalan Cortes (1876), Los fueros de Cataluña (1878), The crisis of Catalanism (1906) and Civil Code of Catalonia (4 vols., 1916-1919).
Post a Comment
Read more

Joseph Alois Schumpeter Biography

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (Trest, Moravia, 1883-Salisbury, Connecticut, 1950) Austrian economist and sociologist.Joseph Schumpeter began his higher education in Vienna, where he was a disciple of Friedrich Von Wieser and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, prominent representatives of the Austrian marginalist school.In 1907 he continued his studies in Great Britain.Austrian Finance Minister (1919), devoted himself mainly to teaching, being a professor at Bonn and Harvard.In 1932 he settled permanently in the United States. Joseph A.Schumpeter Joseph Schumpeter's work, one of the most extensive to be produced in the 20th century, exerted a broad influence on economic thought and social sciences as a whole.Schumpeter stressed the importance of entrepreneurs, the creation of credit and technology in economic development, in addition to arguing with socialism. One of the concepts introduced by Schumpeter that would have more popularity was that of innovation.According to him, there is a stat...
Post a Comment
Read more