(b Barcelona, 30 Nov 1873; d Barcelona, 21 Feb 1911). Spanish Catalan painter. He studied under the Romantic painter Josep Mirabent Gatell (1831-99), Gabriel Mart?nez Alt?s (1861-1932) and Lluis Graner (1863-1929), and at the Escola de Belles Arts (Llotja) of Barcelona (1893-5). He had already exhibited a painting at the Primera Exposici? General de Belles Arts at the Palau de Belles Arts in Barcelona in 1891, and from then he often exhibited work at the Sala Par?s. He was a member of the Colla del Safr?, a group of young artists that used to paint landscapes of the fields outside Barcelona. With other members of the Colla, Ricard Canals (1876-1931) and Juli Vallmitjana (1873-1937), he discovered the remote valley of Bo?, in the Pyrenees, in 1896, where he made many sketches and paintings of disabled people, of whom there were many in the area. With Canals he moved to Paris in 1897 and exhibited drawings of Bo? at the Salon du Champ de Mars and at the 15th Exhibition of Impressionists and Symbolists at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville. In 1898 he exhibited with Canals at the Galerie Dosbourg and published some drawings in Vie moderne. After returning to Barcelona, at Els Quatre Gats he exhibited drawings of the soldiers returning home after the hard defeat of the Spanish Army in Cuba (e.g. Repatriate, 1899; Barcelona, Mus. A. Mod.). Conservative critics denounced his chosen subjects as ugly, but it was precisely because of his gritty realism that he became the leader of a new generation of Catalan painters.
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