Hermen Anglada-Camarasa

Born in Barcelona in 1871, Anglada-Camarasa studied painting against his family's wishes. He trained first with the artists Tomàs Moragas and Modest Urgell, and later at the School of Fine Arts, La Lonja, in Barcelona, before continuing his training in Paris, where he settled in 1894. There he attended classes at the Académie Julian, where the painters of the Nabis group were trained. His early work focused on realist landscapes -the Sala Parés in Barcelona hosted his first individual exhibition, in 1894, with this genre of painting-, but after his stay in the French capital, his work evolved towards the representation of Parisian nightlife, with a marked colourism and fashionable female figures. This stage of his career brought him international recognition, and allowed him to reach international audiences by exhibiting all over the world. Following a summer stay in Valencia in 1904, he became interested in Valencian folklore and changed the theme of his works. He dedicated himself then to the representation of gypsy figures and women in regional Spanish costumes —regional dress, wraps, embroidered shawls and jewellery— with a high level of detail, which led to the development of a certain decorative emphasis in his painting. Influenced by a painter friend who lived on the island, he traveled to Mallorca in 1909 for the first time, on Gaudí's recommendation, and settled there five years later, at the start of the First World War. The landscapes of Mallorca became the central theme of his work, leaving aside the themes developed in Paris. He recovered the genre of his first paintings, the landscape, but he focused on representations of scenes from his new environment —countryside and coastal environments, fish and underwater scenes— and in a radically different way: he abandoned realism in favor of more dreamlike views,inspired by Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, in which the exaltation of colour and light dominates. During this period, faced with the development of the avant-garde in Europe after the Great War, Anglada-Camarasa redirected his career towards the United States. From 1924 to 1934 he participated in numerous group exhibitions in different North American cities: Pittsburgh, Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Cleveland, among others. The painter's first period in Mallorca lasted twenty-two years, until 1936. When the Civil War broke out, Anglada-Camarasa was in Barcelona. Due to the political situation, he was unable to return to Mallorca, which soon fell into the hands of Franco's army. At that time he found refuge in the abbey of Montserrat. The rugged landscapes of Montserrat,whose distinctive topography, were a great source of creativity for Anglada-Camarasa during his stay there. His representations of Montserrat are the most characteristic ones from this period. At the outbreak of World War II, he went into exile with his family in France, in Pougues-les-Eaux (Burgundy), until he returned to Mallorca in 1947. During his years in France, representations of vases, still lifes and landscapes abound, along with some human figures. Back in Mallorca, his work became increasingly scarce, due to an accident he suffered in 1953. He died in 1959 on the island where he had spent a good part of his life and which had inspired so much of his work.