Biography
Francesc Domingo trained in Barcelona at the Escola Superior de Bells Oficis of the Mancomunitat and at the school of Francesc Galí. From its beginnings, Domingo was a member of the Agrupació Courbet, founded in 1918, together with E. C. Ricart, Joan Miró, Rafael Sala and J. Llorens Artigas. All of them were associated with the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and were pupils of Francesc d’A. Galí. He later took part in the exhibitions organised by Les Arts i els Artistes.
In 1920 he settled in Paris, where, as a result of his admiration for Cézanne, he maintained —through multiple evolutions— a constant concern for structure, a feature that marks his entire oeuvre. In Paris he came close to Cubism between 1922 and 1927, a period during which he enriched his chromatic palette. He also lived in Brittany from 1927 to 1929 and, between 1929 and 1931, went through what has been described as a spectral phase. After returning to Barcelona and settling there between 1931 and 1939, he cultivated a form of social realism devoid of demagogy: an idealised vision of working-class leisure, a theme he had already explored during his early years in Barcelona. Works such as The Peasant, The Players and Men in the Tavern belong to this period.
He served as secretary of the Union of Artists, Painters and Sculptors of Catalonia and developed an intense cultural activity during the Spanish Civil War. The post-war years represented a period of uncertainty and disorientation. Alongside Ramon Calsina and Josep de Togores, he has been considered one of the most significant painters of the Deco movement in Catalonia. His work evolved within the field of figuration, with drawing occupying a particularly important place. He also collaborated on the illustration of fine literary editions; in 1937 the Generalitat published his album of drawings Children and War.
From 1951, following a stay in Buenos Aires in 1950, where he devoted himself to portraiture, he settled in São Paulo, Brazil, and moved towards a stylisation of his traditional figurative constructivism. He won the Grand Prize for Drawing at the 2nd Hispano-American Biennial of Art, held in Havana in 1954. He taught printmaking at the School of Fine Arts, opened an art gallery in 1963 and founded the Grupo Bisonte, which included Walter Levy, Pere Tort, Jabago, Paulos Chaves and other painters.
He worked in printmaking, mural painting —including the chapel of San Rafael in Amparo and that of Nossa Senhora de Monte Serrate in São Paulo—, portraiture —with figures such as Alberto Salles and Euclides da Cunha— and other subjects. He exhibited in numerous cities across Europe, the United States and Brazil, and received many awards and honours. He exhibited again in Barcelona in 1967 and 1973.